The Lighthouse Construction Industry Charity is launching its ‘Help Inside the Hard Hat’ campaign to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week.
The campaign aims to raise awareness of mental wellbeing issues in the construction industry and how its workforce can reach out for help.
It addresses the common perception that construction workers are ‘hard’, always ready with a quip or keeping up with an alpha-male version of masculinity on site or at work. However research shows that not to be true. The charity deals first hand with the results of not addressing issues ‘inside the hard hat’.
The four posters that make the basis of the campaign each deliver thought provoking quotes:
All of the campaign resources are available to download free of charge from the charity’s website so that everyone can get involved. There are a variety of poster sizes to choose from and companies can add their logo to show they are proudly supporting the campaign.
For those companies that want to ‘go large’ with their support, artwork suitable for hoardings and site buildings can also be provided on request and for free.
The Help Inside the Hard Hat campaign was created by the London agency And Rising, which stepped forward to support the charity after hearing about mental health issues in the industry.
Darius Rodrigues, Creative at And Rising, said: “We were staggered by the statistic that every single working day, a construction worker takes their own life and this really pulled at the team’s heart strings.
“We wanted to do everything that we could, to not only help the Lighthouse Club raise awareness and address the enormity of the issue, but also to showcase all the fantastic work that is being done by the charity to support construction workers in crisis.”
The campaign is also being supported by the Considerate Constructor’s Scheme which is despatching copies of the posters to all its registered sites, and including posters to all its Construction Industry Helpline Packs.
Bill Hill, CEO of the Lighthouse Construction Industry Charity, said: “We want to deliver a message of hope and reassure our construction community that ‘we’ve got their back’ and that we are working tirelessly to ensure that no construction worker or their family is alone in a crisis.
“We really want the industry to get behind this campaign so that our workforce knows about all of the resources we have available to help inside the hard hat. If construction workers don’t know we are here then we can’t help them.
“This is all about removing the stigma of talking openly about emotional wellbeing and encouraging people to start a conversation by checking that their work mates are OK. This one simple action could make all the difference to someone and could eeven save a life.
“We also want to say a huge thank you to the fantastic team at And Rising who worked so hard to pull this campaign together for us, we would not have been able to achieve this without their help. A big thank you also goes out to the team at CCS who are helping us get this important message out to construction sites.”
”For the first time ever we’re also encouraging the industry to share our messaging, not just within the boundaries of a site but on external hoardings too, Covid-19 has brought the mental health agenda to the fore and so the timing is right to share our important message with a wider audience and create a sense of community with the general public; the same public that uses the schools, hospitals, roads etc that our construction workforce work hard to deliver in often very difficult circumstances.
The charity is then urging everyone to take photos of the posters in situ and share them on social media to raise as much awareness as possible.
