An Exploratory Study on Mental Well-Being of Employees in Construction Organisations

Well-being is about the psychological capital linked to happiness and life satisfaction. The concept of well-being in construction is poorly defined and predominantly focuses on stress. Human resources management (HRM) practices in an organisation influence the physical and mental wellbeing of the employees and promote high performance behaviours. In the human intrinsic construction industry, major problems are related to the lack of skilled labour, stress, working hours, workload, inefficient leadership, mismatch of job and employee, delays in project and cost over runs. Understanding and facilitating physical and mental well-being of employees through various HRM interventions can result in improved organisations’ performance. It has been attempted to study the factors influencing the mental well-being of employees in a large construction organization in India using mixed methods research. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaire survey were used for data collection. Supervisor attitude and training showed significant contribution to the employee well-being. It has been observed that there is a positive relationship between employee well-being and employee performance. All the factors are positively correlated with employee well-being; specifically, training, job stress and equality have shown a strong correlation. Training has a moderate positive correlation with performance, while motivation exhibited a weak negative correlation with performance. These results would greatly help the construction organisations to formulate HRM strategies for improved performance and well-being of employees.