Hazards and Risk in Construction and the Impact of Incentives and Rewards on Safety Outcomes

Workplace hazards, when combined with demanding task, organizational factors, work environments, personal factors, and external factors can produce unacceptable safety risks to field personnel and may lead to severe workplace injuries. Workplace accidents are undesirable; they can cause physical and psychological harm to workers, their families, and the entire community at work. Along with this potential harm, workplace accidents are associated with potential negative economic and noneconomic impacts on quality of work, worker productivity, work schedule, project cost, stakeholder relations, and corporate reputation. To effectively mitigate and control workplace safety risk, a comprehensive risk-mitigation plan should be developed and implemented before workers are exposed to risk. To develop and implement an effective risk mitigation plan, the difference between hazard and risk and the transformation process that a hazard undergoes when combined with other workplace conditions before emerging as a workplace safety risk must be fully comprehended. To facilitate this comprehension, this paper describes the differences between a hazard and safety risk and provides an explanation of the potential impact of internal, external, and project- and organizational-related, factors on the magnitude of the exposed safety risk. Hazard is not synonymous with risk, although hazard severity is a major determinant of the magnitude of exposed safety risk and the safety outcome of an operation primarily relies on the level of worker exposure to the hazard. Similarly, incentives are not tantamount to rewards even though rewards are the end result of incentives. Incentives are motivations associated with future rewards, either extrinsic or intrinsic, that are contingent upon the fulfillment of future conditions determined ahead of time before the start of work operations. The paper is expected to: (1) benefit field practitioners by helping them to increase their understanding of the transformation of a hazard into acceptable or unacceptable safety risk; and (2) provide a summary of the different types of behavioral approaches (e.g., safety incentive programs) that employers can implement to enhance workplace safety and work quality.