A scenario for you, I'd love to hear your thoughts... 

New large scale construction project in Philippines: crazy housekeeping, people climbing over any part of the structure, harnesses only clipped-on if senior manager is watching, significantly damaged lifting slings, stagnent pools of water, rusty old pieces of machinery, electrical cables like horror picutes, you get the idea! 

We're sub-contractor to a lip-service, "paperwork = good safety" kind of main contractor. 

Our own work teams have been onboarded/inducted, task briefed, supervised, reminded, re-reminded, disciplined, tool-box-talked, etc. We've had several safety stand down events too. But significant unsafe behaviours are still happening. 

The problems are:  > Removing people for major/repeat unsafe behaviours means we'd have no labour on the project.  > Training and re-training isn't adjusting behaviour, there is prevailing apathy towards safety (note that we're in a country where whole families, including babies regularly ride altogether on a single motobike). > Supervision is 'good' by local standards, but 'strong' (e.g. USA-standard) local construction supervision is very hard to find...do such people exist?  > Expat Supervision is not respected, so we still need that local influence 

Has anyone 'cracked' the problem in similar circumstances?! Or should I just go home =:)

Post titled "crazy behaviour in Vietnam" I was thinking of the Russian roulette scene in The Deer Hunter - then I saw the geography is actually a few hundred miles out

Thankfully A Kurdziel brought it back to my original mental image - a site where the "H&S" professional is repeatedly handed a revolver loaded with a single bullet and charged to pull the trigger

Got my passport, got a plane ticket.. going home

Hartman,

The phillipines is for the most part very religious one way or another, it may pay to bring in a Priest or Iman depending on where you are at, they may not listen to you or your guys but they sure as hell will listen to their religion preaching to them.  It is a little out of the box I know, but if nothing else is working in my opinion worth a try?

Or you could hit them where it hurts in the pocket by deducting from their salary for every unsafe act they commit, it will take a lot of supervision and tracking but hitting people where it hurts can be effective.

If all else fails have weekly competitions for Karaoke Machines for the safest employee/team/department filipinos love to sing karaoke, may even lighten the mood a little.

Good luck though, you have a challenging job and if you need any assistance im a short flight away