Concerns About On-the-job Safety Persist
Nearly 40% of workers are more concerned with on-the-job safety this year than they were last year, according to a 360training.com survey of a thousand people across several manual labor-intensive industries. Additionally, a quarter of workers worry every day about getting injured because of their job. That number goes up to 27% for workers in the construction and oil industries.
Slips, trips and falls were the top workplace safety concern (36%), followed by electrical hazards (13%), ergonomic problems (9%), vehicle/equipment accidents (7%) and falling objects (6%). For the construction industry specifically, electrical hazards were identified as the leading cause of concern.
Broken down by gender, women are 500% more likely to cite workplace violence (and 100% more likely to cite ergonomic problems) as their number one safety concern when compared to men. And men are significantly more likely to worry about falling objects and electrical hazards.
More than 70% of construction industry respondents state their employers invest in job skills and career development training, yet across all industries surveyed, 56% of respondents stated they were extremely interested in receiving more training.
Joanna Masterson was a writer and editor for Construction Executive for more than a decade.