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BUILD MANITOBA     winnipegconstruction.ca
WCA EDUCATION
By Kelly Parker
Mental health is increasingly being 
recognized as a critical safety issue 
on construction sites – not as a soft or 
secondary concern, but as a factor that 
can directly influence whether workers, 
and those around them, stay safe. While 
physical hazards are carefully monitored 
and controlled, the risks created by 
mental distress often remain invisible 
until something goes wrong.
“When we’re looking at jobsites and 
we’re doing our safety walks, we’re 
looking at the physical hazards,” notes 
consultant Wendy Hofford, president 
of WH Strategic Drive. “But there are 
silent hazards in between – people 
working with tools, working from heights, 
working with large machinery or in tight 
spaces – contexts where, if their mind is 
somewhere else, they put themselves 
and others at risk.”
Mental health challenges are not new 
to construction. The industry has long 
been one of the most stressful, with 
pressures that can stack up quickly. Tight 
deadlines, physically demanding work 
and constant productivity demands are 
often layered on top of personal stressors 
outside the jobsite. Research shows that 
mental health issues have become more 
prevalent in recent years, even before 
the COVID-19 pandemic piled on.
“Awareness is increasing, so I think the 
most important thing is talking,” notes 
Lori Kincaid, HR director at Penn-co 
Construction. “Construction [has]  
nearly double the suicide rate of  
[other industries] because it’s such a 
high-stress environment.”
At Penn-co, those pressures are often 
amplified by the nature of the company’s 
contracts, many of which are in northern 
First Nations communities. “Our 
employees will have to go up north for 
maybe 10 days, then come home for four 
or 15 days – whatever their turnaround is 
– and then head back,” explains Kincaid. 
“So they’re away from their families, they 
have long hours, intense physical labour 
and seasonal layoffs.”
Hofford sees similar stressors play out 
daily across the companies she works 
with, adding that the ongoing labour 
shortage has intensified workloads  
and burnout.
Compounding these pressures is 
construction’s traditionally entrenched 
“tough guy” culture. Historically, in that 
environment, discussing mental health 
has often been viewed as a sign of 
weakness. According to that mindset, 
observes Kincaid, “you’re not supposed 
to talk about your [mental health] or 
you’re not tough, and there is a concern 
that it makes you sound weak. But 
the more we talk about it, the more 
we reduce the stigma and create an 
understanding that everyone struggles.”
For some contractors, this reality has 
prompted a shift in how mental health  
is treated within their overall safety 
culture. Rather than being addressed 
only after a crisis, it is increasingly 
being woven into daily operations and 
leadership expectations.
“For construction specifically, I think 
mental health isn’t just a buzzword we 
use – rather, in the last few years, we’ve 
increasingly built it into our culture,” 
emphasizes Kincaid. “We focus on 
normalizing conversation about mental 
health, we train our leaders to recognize 
when someone might be struggling, 
and we make sure employees know 
where to turn for help without that fear 
of judgment.”
That approach places on-site 
supervisors on the frontlines of mental 
health awareness. Hofford stresses that 
supervisors don’t need clinical expertise 
to recognize when something is wrong – 
just attentiveness and a willingness  
to act.
That visibility matters, Hofford notes, 
because hesitation often stems from 
MENTAL HEALTH ON CONSTRUCTION SITES
Mental health is emerging as a frontline safety issue in construction, 
as companies work to reduce stigma, equip supervisors and protect 
workers from risks that aren’t always visible
“We’re not there to diagnose. We’re there to be 
with them, to walk with them, to support them 
when they need it the most.”
Wendy Hofford

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