RR505 - Trojan horse health and safety messaging: An assessment of the long-term and behavioural impact on construction site operatives

One of the problems in the construction industry is that much of the workforce at site level is self-employed and there is little opportunity or incentive to invest in training. In addition, the current shortage of local construction operatives will inevitably result in the recruitment of more overseas workers who bring an additional set of challenges that have to be addressed, particularly in terms of their language skills, their working culture and previous health and safety training. It is crucial, therefore that safety information is made available to site operatives to build on their previous training or refresh and reinforce awareness of good health and safety practices. Trojan Horse messages are ideally suited for that purpose.

To assist in the dissemination of health and safety information to site operatives, SCI initiated the Trojan Horse project in 2004. The project was sponsored by the Health and Safety Executive and aimed to deliver positive safety messages to site operatives using messages on the medium they routinely work with. The study showed that the Trojan Horse messaging technique:

• Generated minimal interference with construction site works;
• Elicited positive responses from the operatives working on site and utilising components on which Trojan Messages were displayed;
• Resulted in high levels of awareness and information uptake with regards to the safety recommendations.

The report is available on the HSE website as report number RR336. The feedback from industry stakeholders was positive and it was recommended that a second phase of the project is carried out to assess the long-term impact of the messages.

Visit the RR505 report (PDF) ^[12]

This report and the work it describes were funded by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Its contents, including any opinions and/or conclusions expressed, are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect HSE policy.

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