Safety Leadership Starts with Inclusion: Why Temporary Workers Must Be Central to Your Safety Strategy

Reimagining Safety Through the Lens of Leadership

Each May, Construction Safety Week invites us to pause and reflect on our most fundamental responsibility: protecting our workforce. It’s a time when job sites across the country hold stand-downs, share powerful stories, and reemphasize the importance of safety as a cultural cornerstone, not just a compliance metric.

But for those of us leading the future of construction, where speed, complexity, and scale are accelerating, one question must rise to the top: How do we ensure the spirit of Safety Week lives beyond the banners, especially for those workers who are often the most vulnerable?

Temporary Workers: Critical Yet Often Overlooked

Temporary labor is essential to our industry, but is often excluded from the safety conversation. As project demands grow, particularly in sectors like renewable energy, hyperscale data centers, and infrastructure, companies rely more heavily on contingent labor to scale efficiently.

These workers bring skill, adaptability, and experience, but they also face unique challenges. They often have limited exposure to site culture or communication norms. Language barriers or literacy gaps may exist. They may hesitate to speak up due to status uncertainty. And they frequently receive minimal onboarding time and fewer support networks. In many cases, they’re not fully integrated into the jobsite safety framework. That is not just a missed opportunity, it’s a systemic risk.

From Compliance to Connection: Where Safety Culture Begins

True safety leadership isn’t about checking boxes, it’s about shaping behavior, mindset, and trust. That doesn’t happen through orientation videos alone. It happens through human connection, communication, and cultural inclusion. Construction innovators must see communication not as a courtesy but as a core competency.

Great leaders recognize that safety language must be accessible, clear, and consistent, especially for temporary crews. That includes bilingual or visual-first communications, repetition of high-risk protocols during task transitions, and always reinforcing the “why” behind safety practices, not just the “what.”

Building Trust in the Field

Empowering someone to speak up about a safety concern is not intuitive, especially if they feel disposable or overlooked. That’s why leaders must actively model open communication and humility. Normalizing uncertainty, inviting questions, and publicly acknowledging those who raise concerns sends a powerful message: that every voice matters.

Safety cultures flourish not in lectures but in moments, brief conversations, walk-throughs, and team huddles where respect is visible, and leadership is human. The most effective site leaders don’t just issue instructions; they observe, listen, and support their teams, especially those new or rotating in.

The Innovation Opportunity in Safety Communication

If your firm is investing in modular construction, AI-driven scheduling, or predictive analytics, consider this: your greatest safety innovation might be your ability to reach every worker, not just the ones in your employee database.

Progressive firms are integrating temporary labor into formal recognition programs, using digital tools to track safety interactions across all worker types, and offering wellness resources and mental health support without barriers. They understand that culture drives performance, and inclusion drives culture.

The Link Between Mental Wellness and Physical Safety

We must also remember that physical safety cannot be separated from mental presence. Workers under stress, whether from financial pressure, fatigue, or unfamiliar environments, are less likely to stay alert, focused, and communicative.

“Be Present,” one of the key themes of Safety Week, is not just a message; it’s a mandate. Construction leaders must champion efforts to reduce stigma around mental health, ensure access to wellness resources, and maintain environments where we’re asking for help is a mark of strength, not weakness.

A Call to Action for the Construction Industry

Safety is everyone’s right. But it’s leadership that makes that right real. If we’re serious about reducing incidents, attracting the next generation of skilled workers, and setting new standards in operational excellence, then we cannot afford to treat any segment of our workforce as peripheral.

Temporary workers are not temporary responsibilities.
Communication is not a courtesy, it is a strategic necessity.
And safety is not a week-long campaign, it is a continuous leadership mandate.

Let this year’s Construction Safety Week be more than an event. Let it be a turning point. Let’s raise the bar not only for what safety looks like, but for who it includes.

Because the companies that will lead in the next era of construction are those who recognize that culture is the ultimate jobsite technology and inclusion is its most powerful upgrade.

Let Safety Week Be the Start, Not the Finish.