Improving the Performance of Ethnic Minority Construction Workers through Proactive Organizational Stress Management

In a recent survey, employers in Hong Kong have noted their strongest hiring intentions since 2020 (Manpower Group 2022). Construction offers the most dynamic employment outlook, at 61% in 2022, due to large-scale infrastructure projects. However, approximately half of the registered construction workers are aged 50 or above, leading to serious shortages of laborers in the construction industry. As a result, the number of ethnic minority workers, mainly from South Asian countries, had increased by 3.7-fold in 2021 (Census & Statistics Department 2011; CIC 2021). In fact, ethnic minority construction workers (EMCWs) often work on demanding tasks (heavy workload with limitedly understandable instructions) in risky environments (job insecurity and unfair wages) involving complex social networking (language barriers and different culture/religions). Furthermore, employers/local workers continue to resist hiring/collaborating with EMCWs in their companies at construction sites (Equal Opportunity Commission 2020). These challenges (i.e., stressors) induce great stress in the EMCWs in comparison with native workers (Chan et al. 2017), which may significantly influence the performance of EMCWs and the profitability of construction companies. Although the Construction Industry Council has introduced various training protocols for construction workers, less attention has been given to construction companies for handling the specific constraints related to EMCWs at construction sites. Medical studies have shown that a reasonable level of stress can stimulate overall organizational performance (Marshall & Cooper 1976). However, excessive stress may seriously worsen performance (e.g., distrust, low productivity, turnover, accidents). The proposed research thus aims to improve the performance of EMCWs in construction companies in HK (a challenging environment) through a proactive Organizational Stress Management (OSM) approach. The objectives are (1) to identify stressors, stress, organizational coping strategies and performance; (2) to construct complicated organizational Stress‒Performance relationships (Stressors, Stress, Organizational Coping Strategies, and Performance) for EMCWs; (3) to develop a proactive Organizational Stress Management (OSM) model for EMCWs, (4) to verify the OSM model for EMCWs with real case studies, and (5) to propose an Organizational Stress Management guidelines for improving the performance of EMCWs in the industry. A triangulation method, including a large-scale survey and a longitudinal case study with both quantitative and qualitative data, will be adopted to cross-validate the results in the study. It is envisaged that the findings will help in devising a holistic OSM model with practical OSM guidelines/programs specifically for EMCWs in this complicated industry in order to support the holistic development of HK in the long term.