Relationship between Individual Resilience, Interpersonal Conflicts at Work, and Safety Outcomes of Construction Workers

Abstract

Interpersonal conflicts at work (ICW) have been widely regarded as a job stressor; however, it is rarely linked to physical safety outcomes. The ICW primarily has two forms on a construction site: conflicts with supervisors (ICWS) and conflicts with coworkers (ICWC). This study examined the occurrences of ICWS and ICWC on construction sites, and investigated the relationship among ICWS, ICWS, and physical safety outcomes together with job stress. In addition, possible antecedents of ICWS and ICWC including workhours, mobility, and individual resilience were also examined. The research was based on 837 surveys collected from more than 100 construction sites in Ontario, Canada between July 2015 and July 2016. Structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques were used to test the hypothesized relationships. This paper leads to the following conclusions. Although ICW was reported as quite often or very often by only 6.3% of respondents, it had a significant effect on both physical safety outcomes, including physical injuries and unsafe events, and job stress. Individual resilience (IR) had a significant negative correlation with both ICWS and ICWC, which in turn could decrease the frequency of physical safety outcomes and job stress. The contributions of this study are that safety professionals may consider adding coping skill training safety programs to improve the individual resilience of their workforce and reduce conflict-related safety outcomes.