Industry expertise

Construction & built environment

Insync partners with builders, contractors, developers and engineering firms across Australia, bringing sector-specific research, benchmarks and advisory support to an industry where the work is hard, the workforce is mobile, and the wellbeing of your people is a safety issue as much as a human one.

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Smiling male worker in a yellow and blue uniform leaning on a worktable in a busy warehouse.

ORGANISATIONS WE’VE PARTNERED WITH

NEX Building Group logo with bold navy letters and a bright blue diagonal cross forming the X.
AVENG logo with stylized A and V forming a mountain, followed by the word AVENG and slogan 'Providing a better life'.
Simonds logo: red wordmark on a black rectangle with a red roof shape above the text
Arena logo: dark, low-contrast 'arena.' text on a black background
A.G. Coombs logo with an orange and green circular emblem to the left of bold black text A.G. Coombs.
The sector right now

An industry that builds everything except, too often, a way to look after its own people

Construction runs on tight margins, fixed deadlines and a workforce that forms and re-forms with every project. The pressure is relentless, the hours are long, and much of the workforce on any site isn’t even directly employed by the head contractor. It’s a model built for delivery, not for looking after people, and it shows.

The hardest truth in this industry is that it loses too many of its workers to poor mental health. Construction carries one of the highest suicide rates of any sector in Australia, and the conditions behind that- isolation, stigma, job insecurity, financial stress and a culture that has long prized toughness over honesty- are workplace conditions, not just personal ones.

Which means they can be measured, understood and acted on. The organisations leading this industry have worked out that knowing how their people are really doing isn’t soft, and it isn’t separate from safety or delivery. It’s central to both.

What we hear from sector leaders

Four challenges every construction and built-environment leader recognises

These are the pressures that CPOs, people and culture leads, and project and operations leaders in construction most often raise with us.

1

The industry's mental health crisis is a workplace issue

Construction loses more of its people to suicide than almost any other industry in Australia, and the drivers, job insecurity, financial pressure, isolation, long hours and a culture that has made it hard to admit you’re struggling, are conditions in the workplace, not just in the individual. We measure those conditions: where psychological distress, stigma and lack of support are concentrated, and where people don’t feel safe to speak up. We’re not a crisis service and we don’t replace MATES in Construction or your EAP, but we give you an honest, evidence-based picture of where the risk sits, so you can act before it becomes a tragedy rather than after.

2

Measuring a workforce that assembles, scatters and reassembles

A construction workforce isn’t a stable headcount. Teams form around a project and disperse when it ends, and a large share of the people on any site are subcontractors or labour hire rather than your direct employees. That breaks the logic most engagement surveys rely on. We design measurement around how the industry actually works: who you want to hear from, how to reach a mobile and site-based workforce, and how to read results when the population shifts from one project to the next.

3

Understanding the human conditions behind safety

On a construction site, the factors that drive engagement are the same ones that drive safety: fatigue, whether people feel safe to call a stop, trust in the supervisor, pressure to hit a deadline regardless. Anyone can run a survey. The more valuable thing is measuring the human conditions that sit behind both your incident rate and your turnover, so you can act on the causes of both. We focus there. We don’t plug into your incident data and claim a correlation; we surface the conditions safety research links to harm; in a form your leaders can act on.

4

Attracting and keeping the workforce construction needs

Construction faces a structural skills shortage while also struggling to attract and retain a more diverse workforce. Pay alone won’t solve either challenge. Understanding what makes people join, stay and thrive, across different sites, teams and leaders, helps you strengthen retention and create a workplace that draws from a broader pool of talent.

Solutions for this sector

Built for construction and built-environment organisations

Most providers do one piece of this. Insync covers the whole picture and joins it up: employee experience and the psychosocial conditions behind wellbeing and safety, culture, frontline and project leadership, and, through our sister brand Insync Boards, board and executive effectiveness. In an industry where the board carries the safety record and the workforce risk, that connected view matters: your wellbeing data, your hazards, your culture and your site leaders read together rather than as separate reports. The same sector team carries the thread. The services below are the ones construction clients use most, each applied with sector-specific frameworks and consultant expertise.

Employee experience

Psychosocial risk assessment

Identify and manage the psychosocial hazards in your organisation, which in construction are among the most serious of any industry: job and financial insecurity, long hours, isolation, stigma around mental health, and pressure that doesn’t let up. We give you a prioritised, evidence-based view of where the risk is greatest.

This is the foundation product for construction. Psychosocial obligations are legislated, and in this industry the stakes are higher than almost anywhere. Generic office frameworks don’t capture site reality. Ours do.
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Employee experience

Engagement surveys

Measure what drives and depletes engagement across a mobile, project-based and often subcontracted workforce, with measurement designed for how the industry actually operates rather than a desk-based template.

Several of the strongest engagement drivers on a site, supervisor trust, speak-up safety, fatigue, are the same conditions that shape wellbeing and safety. Measuring them once tells you about all three.
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Culture & leadership

Culture assessment

Understand the cultural foundations of your organisation, and where culture is supporting or undermining safety, wellbeing, retention and delivery. In construction, the culture around whether it’s acceptable to speak up, slow down or ask for help is a safety and wellbeing variable, not a soft one.

The ‘harden up’ culture is precisely what makes this industry’s people problems so hard to shift. You can’t change what you haven’t honestly measured.
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Culture & leadership

360-degree feedback

Develop your project, site and operational leaders with structured, independent feedback from peers, direct reports and stakeholders. Choose a validated version or tailor it to your own leadership framework. Especially valuable for site managers and supervisors, whose style sets the tone for safety, wellbeing and whether good people stay.

On a site, the supervisor is the organisation. That one relationship is the biggest single variable in safety culture, wellbeing and retention. Developing it deliberately pays back fast.
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Other solutions for the sector

CLIENT VOICES

What our clients say

Construction & built environments Employee experience

“We have had a very positive experience with Insync and would highly recommend their services to anyone seeking quality support and meaningful results. From the outset, the Insync team impressed us with their professionalism and prompt delivery. Every interaction was personable, and their commitment to going above and beyond to address our queries swiftly is appreciated. Insync’s assistance has always been readily available whenever we required it. The data provided has proven to be consistently reliable, and the insights offered are both clear and actionable. Thanks to their support, we have been able to make informed decisions with confidence. We deeply value the partnership we have developed with Insync and would not hesitate to recommend their services to others. Their dedication and expertise sets them apart.”

Construction & built environments Employee experience

“Insync has been an invaluable strategic partner to Cbus Property, consistently providing deep insights that have strengthened our employee engagement and enriched our organisational culture. Their expertise has helped us align our people strategy with our broader business objectives, fostering a more connected and high-performing workplace.”

Your sector specialist

The team that will understand your organisation

When you work with Insync’s construction and built-environment team, you’re working with advisers who understand the operational realities, the safety and wellbeing stakes, and the project-based workforce dynamics of this industry.

Dr Erika Szerda

Dr Erika Szerda

Head of Employee Experience

Erika leads Insync’s employee experience portfolio, working with leaders in financial services, professional services, engineering, industrials and mining to build cultures that perform under pressure.

A registered psychologist with a Doctorate in organisational and industrial psychology, Erika brings over 17 years of experience working across Australia and Hong Kong — and a rigorous, evidence-based lens to every engagement.

Despite decades of research on leadership and engagement, many organisations are still going backwards. The gap is rarely ideas — it’s clarity. Erika works closely with leaders to understand the specific context before cutting to what matters — identifying the levers that will actually move the dial and building the confidence to act on them. She led the revalidation of Insync’s proprietary employee diagnostic, ensuring it remains statistically robust, current, and built for the decisions leaders actually need to make.

Her work cuts through the noise to find the signal — and then helps leaders act on it.

Read bio

Erika leads Insync’s employee experience portfolio, working with leaders in financial services, professional services, engineering, industrials and mining to build cultures that perform under pressure.

A registered psychologist with a Doctorate in organisational and industrial psychology, Erika brings over 17 years of experience working across Australia and Hong Kong — and a rigorous, evidence-based lens to every engagement.

Despite decades of research on leadership and engagement, many organisations are still going backwards. The gap is rarely ideas — it’s clarity. Erika works closely with leaders to understand the specific context before cutting to what matters — identifying the levers that will actually move the dial and building the confidence to act on them. She led the revalidation of Insync’s proprietary employee diagnostic, ensuring it remains statistically robust, current, and built for the decisions leaders actually need to make.

Her work cuts through the noise to find the signal — and then helps leaders act on it.

Organisations worked with

Talk to Erika’s team

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Common questions

Things sector leaders ask us

Can you survey a workforce that's mobile, site-based and partly subcontracted?

Yes, and designing for exactly that is part of the job. We work with you to decide who you want to hear from (your direct workforce, subcontractors, or both) and choose collection methods that suit people who aren’t at a desk, including mobile, kiosk and paper. We also help you read results sensibly when the workforce shifts from one project to the next.

Can you help us specifically with the industry's mental health challenge?

Yes, in the way a measurement and advisory firm can. We identify where psychological distress, stigma and lack of support are concentrated in your organisation, and where people don’t feel safe to speak up, and we give you a prioritised plan to act on those conditions. We’re not a crisis or clinical service, and we don’t replace MATES in Construction or your EAP, but we give you the honest, evidence-based picture that supports work best alongside.

Can you connect how our people feel to our safety performance?

We measure the human conditions safety research links to incidents: fatigue, whether people feel safe to call a stop, supervisor trust, workload and deadline pressure. We don’t claim to plug into your incident data and produce a correlation, which would need your safety data and a different kind of engagement. What we do is surface the factors behind both safety and wellbeing, so your leaders can act on the causes.

Do you understand construction, or just survey it?

We work with builders, contractors, developers and engineering firms, and we design our measurement around how the industry actually operates, project-based teams, subcontracted labour, site-based work and the wellbeing stakes that come with it. You’ll work with senior consultants who understand your world, not a generic platform applied to it.

Ready to turn feedback into meaningful action?

Our people are what set us apart. Reach out to a consultant who knows your sector — or subscribe to stay across our latest research and benchmarks.

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