I recently joined Michael Zalle on The Canary Report podcast to talk about safety & health in construction.
If you’re expecting a typical conversation about safety metrics, regulations, and compliance, this isn’t that. Instead, it’s a real conversation about real people.
About upbringing. Family. Construction culture. Responsibility. Pressure. Mental health. The things workers carry with them long before they ever step onto a job site.
At EDiS, I talk often about taking a people-first approach to safety and health. To me, that means recognizing that workers are the priority — and taking the time to know them is important.
When you do that, you recognize that exhaustion, stress, pride, grief, pressure, and isolation don’t stay at home when someone comes to work.
For a long time, construction has focused heavily on physical safety, and that does matter. But if we’re serious about protecting people, we also need to be willing to talk more openly about mental health in our industry.
Near the end of the conversation, Michael asked if there was anything else I wanted to make sure we covered.
My answer was simple: “Mental health in construction.”
According to the CDC, construction workers have one of the highest suicide rates of any occupational group in the United States. An estimated 10 to 12 construction workers die by suicide every day — far more than are lost to jobsite injuries.
That reality deserves more conversation than it gets.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It’s a good time to listen.
Click here to listen to the full podcast.
EDiS is hosting a Mental Health Awareness and Suicide Prevention Seminar on September 17th. If you’d like to join us, you can sign up HERE.
