Why a toolbox talk won’t cut it for mental health in construction

You hear ‘construction industry’ and you picture hard hats, steelies, and high-vis vests. The physical danger of the work is both notorious and normalised. Everyone’s got folders full of Health and Safety policies and training guides, covering everything from Fire Safety to Asbestos removal. And employee Mental Health safety is also part of your long list of responsibilities…

But, unlike operating instructions for a new bit of kit, ensuring good mental health takes more than a 20 minute toolbox talk. It’s a great place to start, but a toolbox talk is not designed to dig deeply into the complexities of mental health in the construction industry.

You want to be just as circumspect in your approach to your employees’ mental health as you are with all HSE compliance. But where do you start? Ensuring psychological safety is way more complicated than ordering the right PPE.

With Resilient People as your expert partner, you don’t have to tackle this on your own. We support every level of your organisation to embed the skills, knowledge, and confidence you need to create a self-sustaining ecosystem of mental health support.

So read on to find out how to properly address mental health in your construction firm to ensure psychological safety.

Some sobering statistics about mental health in construction

TW: This section discusses suicide rates in the construction industry. Skip straight to the next paragraph, if this is not the right time for you to read this information.

Suicide rates

The need to focus on mental ill health in the construction industry is most starkly illustrated by the suicide rate. A combined team of Glasgow Caledonian University’s BEAM Centre and the Lighthouse Construction Industry Charity conducted research to monitor the suicide rate for tradespeople over five years and found:

• In 2015, 25.52 people died by suicide per 100,000 employees
• In 2021, 33.82 people died by suicide per 100,000 employees
• Compared to 9.14 people who died by suicide per 100,000 people employed in other professions in 2021

That’s a substantial rise, year on year. And a significantly higher number of suicides in the construction industry than other professions.

Alongside these extremely concerning suicide statistics, ‘On The Tools’ published their research whitepaper into mental health in the construction industry, ‘Behind the High Vis’, and found that 73% of participants said they are experiencing mental ill health right now, or have experienced mental ill health in the past. The report also published that absenteeism due to ill mental health costs the industry a huge £2.75 billion annually.

The focus on mental health in the construction industry right now is urgent.

The positive?

Although there is much work to be done, there are strong indications of hope. When employers invest in employee wellbeing, they are seeing average of £5.00 return on every £1.

Why is the state of mental health in the construction industry so bad?

There are a combination of factors within the construction industry that lead tradespeople to have increased mental ill health, including:

• Job insecurity: Limited term contracts, uncertain work pipeline, late payment for work, and the volatile nature of the construction industry overall.
• Finances: 65% of participants in the ‘On the Tools’ survey said their financial situation impacts their mental health. Add in the cost of living crisis, COVID recovery, and constant threat of van thefts.
• Lone working: Either working completely alone, or on site with people you don’t know.
• Antisocial hours: Night work and weekend shifts are often an expected part of a project with long hours and lengthy commutes to sites. For example, 7 out of 10 members of the ‘On the Tools’ community worked on Christmas Day last year.
• Physicality: The physical danger of some construction work is taken for granted as a norm by most tradespeople. There’s also the constant physical discomfort of working outside in all weathers, with very limited facilities.
• Toxic masculinity: Traditional ‘just get on with it’ attitude, combined with ‘macho’ banter, and traditionally male ways of communicating makes it very difficult for tradespeople to share how they’re feeling about their mental health without stigma.

There’s also the fragmented makeup of how people are employed in the industry. As Bill Hill, CEO of the Lighthouse Construction Industry Charity, said:

“More than 87% of our construction workforce are male and more than 50% of the sector is made up of self-employed, agency staff or zero-hour contract workers. Financial insecurity is a major factor for poor wellbeing in our workforce and the pandemic added greater anxiety and emotional burden.”

It's important that employers consider the individual people under the hard hats, by leading with an attitude of understanding and specialist mental health training.

Typical construction mental health toolbox talks

The ‘toolbox talk’ format is usually a 15 to 30 minute talk, at the start of the working day, with one specific health and safety focus. For example:

• Fire exits and equipment placement on a new site
• A new piece of equipment has arrived - here’s how it operates
• Safe use of ladders
• Night working safety lighting
• Falls from vehicles
• Working on roofs

They’re designed to share important information, about one specific topic, within a reasonable concentration span. A toolbox talk is a good way to share the same information, with everyone at the same time, in the spirit of preventative and proactive physical health and safety management. But they don’t replace the more detailed compliance training required for, say, the Fire Safety Officer.

When it comes to mental health toolbox talks, the focus becomes a general awareness of some mental health issues. As this is designed for all staff, it’s foundational knowledge about common mental health conditions, symptoms, and how you can help someone that’s suffering from mental ill health. A construction mental health toolbox talk will mention that there’s a lot of unnecessary stigma around mental ill health and share some safe language that colleagues can use to discuss it.

Toolbox talk limitations

Of course, this learning format doesn’t lend itself to developing depth of understanding and can’t address underlying issues in your workplace. A toolbox talk on mental health is generic and can only deliver the superficial headlines of an extremely complex area. There’s no instruction manual for managing our own mental health, or numbered guide for supporting a colleague with a mental illness. There’s also limited time to explore people’s own thoughts or raise questions.

Your employees need specialist training and a safe space to have meaningful conversations about how mental health issues impact them. A one-off, standalone session isn’t the way to do this.

A mental health toolbox talk is the start of a conversation. It makes sure that everyone’s working from a baseline of information about mental health first aid and where they can get further support. But it’s limited to awareness - which is not the level of understanding you need to reduce stigma, change attitudes and develop the culture you want in your construction business.

How to create psychological safety in your construction company

You can make a huge difference to the employees in your care by investing in mental health training. This helps you create a working environment that has psychological safety, alongside physical safety, as its foundations for productivity.

“It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees.” Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

The legislation that underpins and connects all the physical safety precautions you take and maintain for your employees, to ensure their physical safety. It can be helpful to approach psychological safety in the same way – understand the risks to mental health and minimise them as much as possible.

What psychological safety really means to your employees

Psychological safety doesn't just mean that your employees trust you’ll treat them fairly as an employer. It’s about having a culture where everyone can express themselves honestly without harm to their mental health.

• Where you can say you’re depressed, without the name-calling ‘banter’
• Where you can say you’re having a hard time with your mental health, without worrying about losing your job
• Where the psychological effects of a work incident are taken as seriously as a physical injury
• Where you’ll be guided to the right help at the right time

Of course you want this for your employees – it’s just ‘the right thing’. To embed principles of good mental health into your company culture, you need to put it at the heart of your entire business strategy. A couple of days, ‘bolt-on’ training won’t create the kind of nurturing ecosystem you’re aiming for.

Resilient People provide training for people in different roles in your company, so that everyone works together on a multi-layered approach to mental health.

Awareness ‘toolbox talk’ training is your first layer. Let’s build on that…

Reactive training for mental health in construction

These are mental health training courses that organisations will often look for as a reaction to an issue or incident that’s already happened. This might look like:

Mental Health First Aid training

This is a two-day, accredited course that gives you certified mental health first aiders for your organisation. Participants are trained to understand factors that affect people’s mental health, spot triggers and signs of mental ill health, and knowledge of where to get further support.

There is some work on their own social skills, like non-judgmental active listening, and how to reassure someone in a mental health first aid situation. It goes beyond basic awareness by giving trainees the skills, knowledge, and confidence to deal with such sensitive subject matter.

Trauma Risk Management (TRiM)

The 2-day TRiM Practitioner course is to train middle leaders to understand how traumatic events impact individuals. They’re able to spot particular signs that lead to early intervention after a traumatic incident and how to scaffold ongoing support.

Organisations often ask about this course after a serious accident, suicide, or death on site. The aim is to develop a peer-led framework to handle the mental health impact of traumatic events. It’s not a ‘one-and-done’ passing of information.

The idea is that you put a monitoring structure in place to provide continuous support. In times of crisis, your TRiM practitioner’s will be able to guide people through a known process. If your company is regularly operating in high risk environments, this kind of preparation is invaluable.

There's an additional day’s training for managers to take a wider lens view of trauma support – from policy, to leading Tactical Incident Briefings. Another critical element is teaching managers to carefully monitor and support their TRiM practitioners.

Proactive training for mental health in construction

Resilient People don’t just deliver the same boilerplate training for every client. We listen to what you need in your organisation and give management the right training and subsequent support to be able to successfully handle mental health issues in your specific organisation.

This means:

• Finding the right people to be TRiM practitioners
• Investing time in your practitioners, like hosting monthly drop-in sessions about psychological safety so they can network, get advice, or simple offload in a safe space
• Understand how to recognise signs of mental ill health, so they can be part of the support system
• Proactively find ways to make maintaining good mental health at work easier

We help managers have a deeper understanding and see mental health support as part of the culture they want for their employees. In the On the Tools whitepaper, 47% of participants said they were ‘somewhat unsupported’ or ‘completely unsupported’ when they were experiencing mental ill health.

Only 28% said they felt ‘somewhat supported’ or ‘completely supported’ during mental ill health. We’d all rather be in the last category. And this new perspective, combined with the power to make proactive changes, secures self-sustaining psychological safety across your organisation.

Wherever you have a culture of real mental health support, you have a workforce that’s better engaged and more productive.

Start being proactive in your approach to mental health training

We all know the adage, ‘prevention is better than cure’, and it’s stuck in our lexicon for a reason – it’s true! As managers you have the opportunity to be utterly proactive in your response to mental health.

Developing an understanding, supportive culture through the right expert training means that your tradespeople are able to be their best, healthiest selves at work – and at home.

Sure, start with a Mental Health Toolbox Talk – but make sure it’s just the start!

Reducing the damaging stigma still attached to mental health in the construction industry will need your leadership and guidance to make sure everyone’s heading in the same direction.

Resilient People won’t just helicopter in, ‘do the training’ and disappear over the horizon – it’s your training, we tailor it to your strategic goals. And we’re here as ongoing support, to help you build the multi-layered, self-sustaining ecosystem your people need to thrive.

Get in touch for a chat about how we can help you build resilience into your construction company.