The 9 regions of the world where construction workers report never having OSH training

The latest World Risk Poll report, published by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation charity, conducted 147,000 interviews in 142 countries and territories around the world, including many working in the construction industry.

What it found was that construction is the second-most dangerous occupation globally, with 22% of construction workers reporting that they experienced harm in the workplace over the past two years.

Women reported experiencing harm in construction at a rate of 17%, while it was 23% for men. The global average was 18%.

Among the potential causes were working with heavy machinery, spending many hours outdoors, exposure to hazardous substances, high-risk injuries such as back and upper-limb disorders, working at height and moving vehicle hazards.

Shockingly, however, 60% of construction workers said they had never received any health and safety training about the risks associated with their work.

In total, there were nine regions of the world where there was a higher proportion of workers claiming never to have received OSH training in construction than those claiming to have received it either within the past two years or at some point longer ago than that.

They were: Latin America and the Caribbean, Southern Africa, Southeastern Asia, Eastern Africa, Central Africa, Central/Western Africa, the Middle East, Southern Asia, and Northern Africa, where a total of 88% of workers claimed never to have had OSH training (see chart below).

Source: World Risk Poll, Lloyd’s Register Foundation

The proportion of those workers reporting experiencing harm was lower in higher-income countries than it was in lower-income countries but regardless of income level, people working in construction saw higher rates of workplace harm than those in agriculture, market or non-market services and manufacturing (see chart below).

Source: World Risk Poll, Lloyd’s Register Foundation

Men, younger people, those with primary education only and the least financially resilient are most likely to experience harm at work, the report found. That’s because the types of work they do skew towards professions where harm is highest: fishing, construction, mining and agriculture.

Reporting rates higher in construction

There was some good news for construction when it came to reporting experiences of harm. Construction stood out for having a relatively high rate of reporting, with three in five (61%) of workers globally who were harmed in the past two years reporting it to someone.

That was a higher rate than in other industries such as agriculture (49%) and manufacturing (42%).

In general, industries that are more at risk from harm also see the highest rates of reporting. The report suggested that this could be because of regulatory requirements around injury reporting for some sectors.

Where the report could offer less firm conclusions was whether higher rates of OSH training led to a reduction in workplace harm.

It suggested that at least at first glance, having been trained or not seems to make little difference with respect to workplace harm. In fact, it noted, a slightly higher proportion of those trained within the last two years and longer ago across all industries have experienced harm.

But it concluded that this was likely to be because those who have been trained are more likely to report incidents.

These findings suggest that regular training not only raises individual awareness but also fosters a culture of safety communication within the workplace.

“Although there is no evidence from the World Risk Poll that going through OSH training in the past two years is always linked to decreasing rates of workplace harm, there is evidence of a link between training and increasing rates of reporting experienced harm. Training plays a crucial role in occupational safety and health by equipping workers with the necessary knowledge and skills to recognise and mitigate workplace hazards and build a workplace culture that explicitly recognises the importance of safety,” the report concluded.

“Employers and policymakers need accurate reporting data about whether and how occupational harm occurs to implement measures and policies to reduce it.”

Read the full report here.