Letter from the President

From the president IF SAFETY IS OUR MOTTO, THEN MENTAL WELLBEING MUST BE A KEY SAFETY INITIATIVE, ESPECIALLY NOW BY: DAVID HELVESTON, PELICAN CHAPTER, ABC 2020 has been a challenging year for our nation and help as courageous, not disgraceful. Advocate for the construction industry. We’ve experienced a global comprehensive mental health and suicide prevention pandemic with stay-at-home orders and governmentpolices in your company. Try to keep crews together mandated closures of businesses, a collapse of oil that consistently work together so that they can build prices and contraction of construction activity, record strong relationships. unemployment rates, and protests on racial inequities that prioritize their employees’ health. Yet as much greater than the national average, the construction Whatever our role in construction, we have a those signs. We must understand what we can do to leadership in your company, have an open-door policy. Change your mindset and view asking for in our country, just to name a few. •Get to know your coworkers and employees by building a trusting relationship. Each one of us is These are unprecedented and often stressful times. more than a name and a skill set, who have a story, I’ve seen ABC Pelican companies address the understand the types of lives they live outside of the pandemic with a strong safety plan and procedures workplace community. as we prioritize the physical health and safety of our •Communicate, communicate, communicate. Ensure employees and coworkers, the time is long overdue employees and coworkers understand how you and for us to expand that safety focus to include mental your company prioritize mental wellbeing and suicide health. More construction workers die by suicide prevention. Give colleagues and employees the space each day than by all other workplace-related fatalities to open up during a time and place that’s comfortable combined. With a suicide rate that is four times for them. industry is facing an enormous crisis. •Raise awareness by educating colleagues and responsibility and a calling to value and uphold the As ABC Members, safety is in the very DNA of who mental wellbeing of the employees and colleagues we are as individuals, employees, citizens, family around us. Lowering these terrible statistics around members and friends. If safety is a motto we profess suicide in construction starts with understanding the in life and on the job, then mental health must be one warning signs and proactively doing something about of the key safety initiatives that we focus on. build up these at-risk individuals. For educational resources on or ways to get involved •If you’re a manager, supervisor, or any position of visit preventconstructionsuicide.com. families, goals and unique personalities. Effort to coworker to recognize signs of mental distress. in suicide prevention in the construction industry,