Reluctance to Change: Key Factors of Foreign Labours’ Safety Non-Compliance Behaviours

Cultural and behavioural differences are the main aspects of reluctance to practise proper safety in the workplace in Malaysia. This is because foreign labourers have monopolised the Malaysian construction sector at the operational level since the early 1980s. Accordingly, the current study examined the key factors of reluctance in practising proper safety from a construction foreign labourers’ behavioural perspective. A total of nine semistructured interviews were conducted with selected construction professionals working closely with foreign labourers at the operational level. Their responses were analysed using thematic analysis through familiarisation of the data coded to determine the main factors and subfactors. The results revealed that age, cultural diversity, callowness, ignorance, overconfidence, carelessness, oversight and misjudgement were the eight key factors in reluctance to practise safety among foreign labourers in Malaysian construction sites. This study believes that a high level of safety compliance among foreign labourers can be achieved when these factors are assessed in greater depth.