The state of well-being in the construction industry

Overall, construction professionals compare unfavourably with the GWP 2015 norm group, with four of the 6 Essentials scales indicating areas that should be of concern to the construction industry. This was, however, not evident in the Psychological Well-being scales, where they compared favourably with the GWP 2015 norm group. An overarching conclusion, based on the t-tests for significant differences, is that in all scales of the 6 Essentials (except for Work-life balance) and Psychological Well-being, employees were significantly worse off than managers and thus more prone to ill-being. Further, notwithstanding the caveat that the number of women respondents (7% of the sample) was low, significant differences were found for women, relative to men, in their overall Personal Psychological Well-being, which includes and is influenced by sense of purpose, as well as the confidence construct of resilience. Two issues classified as 'approaching high risk', namely, lack of feedback and lack of control would be easy to address because it is within the power of organisations to do so. Similarly, the 'high-risk' issues: Work-life balance (long hours, excessive travel time and work interfering with family/home life); Workload (technology overload, unrealistic deadlines and unmanageable workloads); Job conditions (dealing with difficult customers/ clients and lack of enjoyment of job); and Work relationships (aggressive management style, lack of support from others, isolation, lack of clear expectations, others not pulling their weight, others claiming credit for my achievements and poor relationship with colleagues), which depict a bleak workplace and an unhappy work experience, could be addressed by organisations, especially Work relationships.