15-hour Working Day Ads Criticised

Industry newspaper Construction News recently uncovered adverts for 15-hour a day jobs on the Aberdeen Bypass. The roles are for people to operate heavy machinery, including wheeled excavators for up to 80 hours a week. The adverts were withdrawn after Construction News made enquiries with Transport Scotland and the project’s joint venture partners, Galliford Try and Balfour Beatty.

The primary contractors have denied posting the adverts and are investigating where they originated.

This is not the first time Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route project has made headlines for what appear to be unsafe working practices. Another Construction News report revealed that several workers had quit due to stress and exhaustion related to long working hours. Former staff produced evidence that they regularly worked for more than 70 hours a week, with some managing sites for 13 hours at a time.

When told about the recent job ads, one worker who quit due to overwork expressed his dismay: “I’m shocked. After everything that’s appeared in the press about the safety conditions on that project, how can such long working hours be shamelessly advertised? “I got so tired I didn’t feel I could do my job properly anymore and I was worried that, with everyone else as tired as I was, we would be unable to prevent a serious accident taking place. I quit the project because I was working the type of hours that these adverts openly ask for.”

MSP Lewis Macdonald has asked for a public probe into safety issues on the project, saying: “This is supposed to be a flagship infrastructure project – and so should be the gold standard in terms of health and safety as well as the conditions for workers on the project. But testimony from workers on the project tell an entirely different story – and these adverts will only reinforce those reports.”

Numerous studies have shown links between working hours and health issues. Overwork can lead to both stress and fatigue, which in turn have damaging effects on health and performance. The concern at a major building site such as the Aberdeen road works is that workers will be too fatigued to function – leading to a major incident. The project also reported a flipped bulldozer recently, which could be another sign that workers’ fatigue is affecting performance.

Health and safety eLearning from VinciWorks

Our online courses are a cost-effective solution for all of your safety, compliance and performance learning requirements. We offer off-the-shelf courses for a range of health and safety topics, including personal safety, stress management and risk assessments. As well as our prepared training programmes, we can develop bespoke courses that are customised to your business requirements and circumstances.

Workplace stress- what’s the answer?

Stress is a big problem for people at work. And the cost to employers is enormous. A few shocking statistics summarise the size of this problem:

  • 440,000 people in the UK reported that work-related stress was making them ill (according to the Health and Safety Executive)
  • 11.7 million working days were lost in 2015/16 due to stress
  • 23.9 days are lost, on average, for every stressed employee
  • 45% of all working days lost to illness are due to stress

Clearly, stress is a huge problem for working people and their employers. But what exactly is stress, and what can employers do about it?

One definition of stress is ‘an adverse reaction to excessive pressures and demands’. Stress is felt when someone is struggling under the weight of expectations, rather than thriving under pressure. Stress can result in a wide range of symptoms, including a racing heart, palpitations, loss of appetite, trouble sleeping and depression.

Stress can be triggered by a wide range of factors, but common causes include overwork, lack of support, intimidation, bullying and a hostile working environment.

For some individuals, stress becomes a problem when things change at work, such as when their team changes, or when their workload increases. A sense of instability or unclear expectations can leave employees feeling unsupported and anxious.

Unsurprisingly, given the enormous cost of stressed employees, many organisations look for ways to reduce the risk. So what can employers do to support their teams?

A positive first step is to discuss the issues with senior managers, and ensure that they understand the causes and treatments of stress. Training is important, in part because stress can be difficult to identify, difficult to understand and difficult to treat. Senior buy-in helps ensure that a positive, supportive environment permeates down from the top.

Employers can encourage people to talk about stress and acknowledge that sometimes, situations at work can lead us to feel stressed. Employees should be given advice on coping with stress and training to help them spot potential causes. This can help people sidestep potential dangers before they become overwhelming. For example, an individual who is becoming overworked might recognise the beginnings of stress and decide to raise their concerns with their line manager. Together, the pair might agree to delegate some work to a colleague, and perhaps take a short break from work.

For some colleagues, time management training may help them manage their workload differently and prevent feeling stressed. For others, resilience training may help people to cope with stresses at work. This might mean changing their lifestyle, diet or exercise routines to help them relieve the stress they encounter at work. It might also mean taking a break from work, or turning to friends and family for support in times of stress. By learning how to become more resilient, people can gather tools to use when times are difficult.

So while stress might seem like an enormous, inescapable challenge for working people, evidence suggests that there are solutions, and that a little training can go a long way in preventing stress-related absences from work. By simply making employees feel supported, aware of the dangers of stress and capable of developing their own resilience, employers can reduce the impact of stress on their workforce.

VinciWorks provide a number of resources dedicated to identifying stress and managing stress both on an individual level and within a team.

Online Stress Management courses include:

Managing your Personal Stress
Identifying Stress in your team
Managing Stress in your team