Safety is the central value of Hoffman’s culture, permeating every level of our organization. We believe construction injuries are preventable through planning, training, teamwork, and individual vigilance. Our Get Us There Safe campaign serves as a daily reminder to get everyone who touches our projects home safely. For us, safety encompasses mental and emotional well-being and we work to connect people to resources and one another for support. By instilling a deep, personal commitment to safety that reaches from management to craftworkers, we have achieved industry-leading safety performance.
The Commitment
For Hoffman, there’s no compromise, no workarounds, and no shortcuts when it comes to safety.
- We work diligently to set up procedures and safety plans that protect people. We invest in safety innovations, study safety incidents, and establish best practices to run our jobsites as safely as possible.
- We stop work on jobs and execute additional training when safety doesn’t meet our standards. We empower all staff to make the best decisions for a safe workplace.
- We appeal to craft workers to look out for their own safety as well as the safety of the men and women around them. We want everyone to get home safely to the dinner table, the dog park, or their kid’s basketball game.
Tough Enough to Talk
Mental well-being is a big part of safety. We all face personal struggles, but issues involving our mental health can be really hard to talk about. In our industry, reaching out can be the difference between life and death. One in four construction workers struggles with mental health issues, and suicide rates are five times higher for people in the construction industry than the United States national average.
It takes strength and courage to face our demons. Open up and talk. Accept some help. It won’t be easy, but as we like to say, We don’t do easy. We need to be Tough Enough to Talk about mental health.
Hoffman is making mental wellness a key part of our focus on safety in construction. In 2020, Hoffman expanded the GUTS campaign to include a focus on mental health. It’s meant to get people talking, create awareness, and normalize mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and substance abuse and addiction. We have expanded and highlighted the resources available to workers, and individuals identify themselves as willing to discuss mental health issues with others by electing to wear Tough Enough to Talk hard hat stickers. The effort has been particularly helpful for construction workers who have continued working through a pandemic, wildfires, political turmoil, and other stresses.
In 2022, we took this further with the creation of GUTS Rooms and Moment Rooms: jobsite spaces built for connection, privacy, and decompression. These aren’t just quiet break rooms. The GUTS Room is a welcoming social space with couches, arcade games, and a place to eat lunch or connect after work. On the walls are QR codes linking to stories from real construction workers talking about their mental health, stories that help others feel seen and less alone. The Moment Room, by contrast, is private, quiet, and built for stillness. With sound-dampened walls, it’s often the only place on many sites where someone can be alone. Workers have used it to process grief, attend virtual therapy, take a breath during a tough day, or avoid turning to old habits. These spaces have become essential.
The Anthem
Safety’s not just about me. It’s about we.
It’s about the person next to me,
And the person next to them.
Those above and those down below.
Safety isn’t easy. It takes guts.
But everything takes guts 12 stories up.
It’s how we redraw skylines, leave landmarks,
And make city blocks appear out of thin air.
It’s how we get to the next floor,
And the next phase, and the next project.
But most importantly, it’s how we get to the dinner table,
To the dog park, and to our kid’s basketball game.
There are no shortcuts. No workarounds. No compromise.
Just the courage to do what’s right and
Get us there safe.
The Faces of the Campaign
The Campaign in Action
