Author: Nerve Admin

Article created by Supply Chain Sustainability School

Employee wellbeing is paramount on construction sites, with mental health and burnout an important consideration. 1 in 4 UK employees report having a physical health condition and £12.8M is lost annually due to stress alone. So it is relatively little surprise that 64% of construction workers want their employers to provide more support. Similarly, in terms of gender equality, construction has a long way to go: just 13% of construction workers are female and only 1% work onsite.

It is easy to underestimate the extent to which wellbeing and mental health initiatives can impact a project’s bottom line. Traditional and older facilities are often poorly maintained or lacking the space and comfort to allow workers to take a proper breather onsite, contributing to the lack of support many feel at work.

Over two-thirds of construction projects run over budget by more than 10%, and larger projects routinely take 20% longer than anticipated. These factors have resulted in productivity in construction growing by less than 1% annually for the last two decades. To remedy this, projects must look for gains in productivity and efficiency wherever they can find them – including from a diverse and motivated workforce.

Impact: Modern Welfare facilities improve site teams & project results

Staff wellbeing and inclusion has become a real priority for the construction sector and the introduction of modern, environmentally efficient mobile welfare units on site has been paramount in order to allow staff somewhere to rest and take a break, indoors and away from the bustle of the site. Larger, better designed, modern welfare units create a more positive, more inclusive and safer environment for workers on site.

Simple factors like building team morale and ensuring onsite comfort can have a dramatic impact on the kind of workplace culture that emerges. And that can be heavily influenced by things as simple as the welfare you hire. Choosing the right mobile welfare units can greatly improve the attitudes you find onsite, putting an emphasis on wellbeing and changing how employees feel about their work. Welfare Hire ECO welfare units feature water flush WCs and hot water washbasins, separate fully equipped offices and drying & changing rooms, as well as extra-large canteens. There’s enough space for up to 14 workers (dependent on model selected), accommodating diverse teams with consideration to aspects such as separate changing and WC facilities. This enables teams to spend time together in a comfortable space. The large, dynamic design and layout helps provide market-leading welfare, hygiene and break facilities.

Value gained: Improved employee productivity, retention & morale > 500% ROI

At Welfare Hire, providing the most modern and innovative welfare with unique features and specifications is a key objective. These may seem like relatively small factors, but the combined improvements to employee experience can be massive. And this in turn creates ripple effects, leading to improvements in productivity, employee retention and overall staff morale accruing over time. Organisations with greater gender equality are 15% more likely to earn more than competitors and are 6 times more likely to innovate. As we discovered, projects that emphasise employee experience and wellbeing result in 21% higher profitability. In fact, every £1 spent on wellbeing produces an incredible 500% return!

In a recent survey, 50% of Scottish infrastructure firms reported increases to their workload.¹ From making transport more environmentally friendly to creating sustainable energy systems, there is an enormous push to improve the country’s infrastructure.

Welfare Hire is launching a new depot in Scotland’s central belt, to take our service in providing mobile welfare units and lighting towers to the next level for these vital projects. But how will our equipment help these projects? And why is there such a large increase in demand?

WHY SCOTTISH INFRASTRUCTURE MATTERS

Better infrastructure will be at the heart of a more positive future for Scotland. From the £1.2 billion allocated to enhancing the country’s railways² to £1.5 billion for bridge and road maintenance³, these projects will help Scotland achieve net zero, promote more sustainable living and create inclusive economic growth.

In February 2021, the Scottish Government published its Infrastructure Investment Plan (IIP), committing to infrastructure projects cumulatively worth over £26 billion.⁴ Despite reported challenges such as supply chain issues, labour shortages and fears of budget changes,⁵ there are still great opportunities offered from the huge scope and ambition of the Plan. 

This could just be the start

In October of this year, the Scottish Government laid out its plans for an independent Scotland. This included the Building a Better Scotland fund, which would see £20 billion invested in improving Scotland’s infrastructure over the first decade of Scottish independence. 

While this is by no means inevitable, it once again makes clear how large – and important – future investments in Scottish infrastructure projects are likely to be.

How Welfare Hire Supports Scottish Infrastructure

Welfare Hire has supported Scottish infrastructure projects for several years, partnering with regional and national infrastructure frameworks and contractors.

With a continued growing need for specialist equipment in the market, the next phase of our investment establishes a depot in Scotland’s central belt with a dedicated team to support projects in the country.

The depot will house stock of the mobile ECO welfare units and lighting towers we supply to sectors like rail, highways, utilities and construction. This will enable us to support Scottish infrastructure projects in three key ways:

1. Reduced environmental impact

A central motivation for infrastructure spending is to make Scotland greener; the £120m pledged for greener rail is but a single example.⁶ However, net zero targets draw attention to the entire supply chain – and that includes the actual construction and maintenance work involved in creating all this green infrastructure.

Welfare Hire’s mobile welfare units and lighting towers utilise hybrid power and Smart Water systems that unlock huge reductions in onsite fuel consumption and carbon emissions.

2. Support overworked staff

While infrastructure firms plan hard to deliver the projects they commit to, 55% also say they are struggling with labour shortages.⁷ This makes life extremely tough for the workers they do have, and could lead to decreased morale, exhaustion and even mental health struggles.

Welfare Hire’s mobile welfare units are designed to tackle these problems, providing a larger, more comfortable space for workers to rest during downtime. The effect both on workers’ productivity and health can be dramatic – exactly what projects struggling with a shortage of staff need to help keep their site operatives happy and attract new hires.

3. Make sourcing equipment easier

Delays have plagued many large Scottish infrastructure projects since February 2021, even before COVID-19, with almost 50% of projects experiencing such issues.⁸ This emphasises the vital importance of reliable service and support from supply partners.

Welfare Hire’s new depot will deliver the most comprehensive support possible, ensuring projects can always access the mobile welfare units and lighting towers they need – exactly when they need them – from a specialist partner.

Noisy construction sites are nothing new, but many do not realise quite how serious the consequences of all that noise can be. From compromising people’s health to harming local communities, noise pollution is estimated to cost the UK economy an eye-watering £20 billion each year.¹

Construction leaders have a responsibility to fight this, and switching to quieter equipment like eco-friendly mobile welfare units and tower lighting units is a great way of doing that.

But how much impact would they actually have? And why is it so important to reduce on-site noise?

The impact of on-site noise

According to medical studies, around 51% of construction workers have been exposed to hazardous noise.² It’s not just unpleasant; it harms their health. Roughly 14% of construction workers report hearing difficulty, and 7% suffer from tinnitus.³

This extends to the neighbours of the site, too. A recent report outlined how noise from construction sites can cause stress, poor sleep and health problems for those that live nearby;⁴ and the World Health Organisation (WHO) claims noise pollution is the second-largest environmental cause of health issues.⁵

The message is clear: noise pollution makes communication harder, reduces wellbeing and negatively impacts people’s health.

What can construction sites do?

There are a number of ways leaders can reduce the noisiness of their sites. Focusing on particularly noisy activities will help curb the social impact of construction noise.  Additionally, noise restrictions tend to be stricter in the evenings and during the night time, so reducing noise at those times becomes imperative.

Equally, the Government’s advice highlights the value of altering design processes to reduce noise and removing people from the vicinity of noisy work. It also highlights the importance of choosing quieter equipment. And that is where Welfare Hire is able to lend a hand.

How Welfare Hire combats noise pollution

Welfare Hire’s innovative lighting towers run largely by battery rather than generator power; this means they are completely silent whenever the battery is being used. The X-Eco HYBRID LITHIUM, for example, can run silently for 36 hours. This means the lighting tower can be used all night without creating any noise at all.

The battery can then be charged using a generator, but this generator time is a fraction of the time needed if this were the primary source of power to the light.  Charging can take place during the day, ensuring the impact of the noise is minimal. The unit is also fitted with smart telematics, enabling site managers to check the battery remotely and manage charging around their project’s needs.

Similarly, Welfare Hire’s ECO welfare units are powered by solar energy first, lithium battery second and generator power only as a back-up.  This Smart Power management ensures that generator use is roughly ten times less, based on a standard competitor. In the summer, they may be able to run with no generator use at all.

You can see exactly how much your project could save

If you’d like to learn more, reach out to our sales team today.

The UK’s Highways sector is one of its most vital and valuable assets. But from improving safety to delivering on climate targets, the sector faces a number of challenges.

As a proud supplier to many key highways projects, we explore five key trends in this article that will define the highways sector over the next year and beyond.

1. Project delays

A combination of planning delays and a pause on the roll out of smart motorways has led a large number of National Highway’s enhancement projects to be at risk of being deferred or dropped. According to Highways Magazine, the percentage of schemes at risk of missing an SOW commitment increased from 9% in 2020 to 22% last year.¹.

How these delays are resolved is unclear, but it will undoubtedly place pressure on National Highways to demonstrate its ability to deliver; the Office of Road and Rail (ORR) has warned that the company must prove it has “robust risk mitigations” in place.²

2. New safety recommendations

Road accidents are said to cost the UK economy and NHS £30 billion each year.³ And while lockdowns brought about a large decrease in the number of accidents on the UK’s roads, recently published numbers have shown a return to pre-pandemic rates.⁴

The government has responded with the launch of The Road Safety Investigation Branch,⁵ which will provide independent recommendations on how the country’s roads could be made safer and incorporate new technology more effectively. This will likely spur on many high-value projects in the coming years, requiring innovative mobile welfare units.

3. Innovative technology

At the beginning of 2022, the UK government announced that no more all-lane running smart motorways would be built until the concept’s safety could be proven⁶. This dealt a real blow to those who had claimed digital technology would transform roads in the coming years. But there is still reason to expect digital to be a significant part of future projects.

One key way technology will be used in highways moving forward is through design and maintenance. National Highways is already looking to leverage digital to produce a safer and more efficient construction process⁷. The result may be a very large improvement in the output of the sector.

4. The rise of social values

Most industries have seen an awakening on issues of social justice in recent years. The highways sector is no different, and we are just beginning to see how this will be realised in the coming years.

National Highways recently published its Social Value Plan⁸, which outlines how the company will support positive social change. This speaks to a larger trend, where highways businesses race to show their progress in relation to social values⁹ and local councils increasingly factor social value into their procurement decisions¹⁰.

To promote diversity, companies in the sector should consider ways to improve on-site welfare. Providing their workers with innovative mobile welfare units that provide space and comfort will help improve morale and encourage employment interest from a broader range of talent.

5. Reducing carbon emissions

In July 2021, the UK government published its Transport Decarbonisation Plan¹¹ – a guide to helping the country’s transport networks meet net zero targets. From embracing electric vehicles (EVs) to encouraging the use of public transport, this will be a defining challenge for the highways sectors in the coming decade. 

For industry contractors, this is more than just an indication of the kinds of projects they will be working on; it is also a call to arms for them to reduce their own emissions. 

The Department for Transport (DfT) recently argued that fleets played a vital role in overarching net zero efforts. While road vehicles produce more than 90% of emissions, there is still an urgent need for strategic equipment such as mobile welfare units and mobile welfare vans to be as eco-friendly as possible¹².

As net zero deadlines grow closer, contractors may be able to improve their chances of landing valuable contracts by introducing more environmentally friendly equipment – such as hybrid-powered mobile welfare units. This will involve ensuring they have the right supplier partnerships in place to source such vehicles.

Construction has a reputation for being tough, dangerous work. But as anyone with first-hand experience knows, it is not the physical impact of the job which most struggle with – it is the emotional one.

Mental health issues affect a staggering 83% of construction workers in the UK,¹ and should rightly be deemed a major workplace health crisis. But the combination of high-stress work and low job security – as well as a toxic workplace culture which emphasises stoicism over sharing – leads many to suffer in silence. 

Over two thirds of construction workers believe there’s a stigma surrounding mental health which stops them from talking about it,² and 56% of construction professionals work for organisations with no policies on mental health in the workplace.³

Ultimately, men working in the industry are roughly four times more likely than average to take their own lives – and suicide is five times more prevalent than all other fatalities combined.⁴

Welfare Hire is passionate about improving mental health in the construction industry, and in this article we explain why our mobile welfare units should be a vital component of any business’s attempts to do so.

Better mental health will transform construction

As Welfare Hire’s recent research showed, the construction industry has become sluggish in recent years, with low productivity and a growing trend of missed deadlines. But this may be more directly related to the mental health crisis than many assume.

Consider, for example, the economic effect of poor mental health support. Stress, anxiety, and depression account for one-fifth of work-related illnesses – leading to 70 million days of leave and costing an estimated annual cost of £70bn-£100bn.⁵ Improved mental health support would immediately reduce that cost, providing a much-needed boost to construction projects’ productivity and financial efficiency.

This is just one of many ways improving employee experience – by hiring better mobile welfare units – would lead to widespread improvements. Consider hiring difficulties, retention challenges, diversity problems and onsite communication – all would be vastly improved by a wholesale reevaluation of mental health support. And we believe that starts with the onsite environment.

The power of thinking small

Many businesses go wrong by trying to tackle the big picture problem head-on. But this overlooks the small wins available to them, and misunderstands the day-to-day experiences that cumulatively lead to mental health struggles.

A third of construction workers suffer from elevated levels of anxiety every day, and 44% feel their daily workload is too high.⁶ These are low-level concerns that ultimately grow into larger problems, especially when they are persistently underestimated or ignored.

Experts often suggest that construction workers need to be educated and encouraged to talk about their problems. But this overlooks the fact that most construction sites are extremely poor environments for such open communication – especially if you are not used to having such conversations.

How mobile welfare units help

Our business is explicitly designed to help businesses improve the way they treat their employees – by providing the physical comfort and space they need with a range of innovative mobile welfare units and welfare vans. 

Better mobile welfare units and welfare vans can combat this in two ways:

First, they provide the right atmosphere to have important conversations, providing respite from the loud and often intense construction environment. 

Second, they signal to workers that their mental health is being taken into account and supported. This encourages workers to feel safe opening up.The X-Eco10, for example, provides 20% more internal space than other mobile welfare units, enabling up to 10 people to rest at any given time. This can be a gamechanger in terms of employee wellbeing, providing a safe, private space where the complex and vital work of destigmatising mental health concerns can take place.