Evaluating Workers’ Well-being in Off-site Construction Facilities

Well-being is defined as “the way people feel and function on a personal and social level and how they evaluate their lives as a whole”. It encompasses several interrelated dimensions, including the physical, emotional, social, financial, environmental, vocational, and intellectual. An individual’s well-being is influenced not only by their personal experiences but also by their experiences at the workplace. Individuals spend nearly one-third of their life at work and tend to carry their experiences into non-work-related domains. As a result, promoting a work environment centered on employees’ health, happiness, and satisfaction not only is important to ensure efficiency and productivity but, more importantly, represents a fundamental dimension of social responsibility and ethical obligation. In the context of off-site construction, the production facility is the primary workplace. Studies have shown how off-site construction can positively influence workers’ well-being. To aid in the realization of off-site construction’s full potential, this paper proposes a multi-step generic framework (Well-OS) to assess and evaluate well-being in off-site construction facilities. Well-OS comprises three phases: well-being factor identification, current-state assessment, and intervention design, implementation, and evaluation. A hypothetical case of off-site construction workers’ thermal comfort is presented to illustrate how the framework can be applied. Ultimately, the framework provides off-site construction managers with a structured approach for conducting a baseline analysis of well-being and proposes the necessary promotive and preventive interventions to improve workers’ well-being and productivity.