Work Health and Safety in Small Business-A Pilot Study in the Australian Construction Industry

Abstract

Work accidents impacts negatively on the physical, mental and social welfare of employees, increase cost of production, and make firms less competitive. The construction industry in Australia consists of 96% small business and has the fifth largest incident rates of serious injury of all industries. Nevertheless, recent statistics by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show noticeable improvement in safety performance within the construction industry compared to previous years.

This descriptive pilot study attempts to verify small business contribution to this recent improvement. Ten owner managers are surveyed in order to examine their commitment to work health and safety using a 34 self-completion questionnaire. The findings show that small business owners in the construction industry take a positive approach toward work health and safety in their work environment.

This study represents only a snapshot of the reality of small construction business commitment to work health and safety in Australia and can’t be generalised to a wider population, therefore further research with larger samples is required to confirm the findings of this study.