Built to Last: A Leadership Toolkit
Empowering labor-intensive companies to lead the way in workplace safety, mental health, and well-being.
About the Built to Last Toolkit
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Built to Last is a practical, evidence-based leadership toolkit for companies in labor-intensive industries—like construction, mining, manufacturing, waste management, and more. It helps teams identify and tackle everyday challenges affecting safety, mental health, and worker well-being.
From upper management to crew members, the program equips your company with tools, training, and support to build stronger leaders and safer worksites where mental health and well-being are valued. Whether facing high turnover, burnout, communication gaps, or inconsistent safety practices, Built to Last delivers real solutions grounded in daily operations.
This isn’t a one-size-fits-all toolkit. Developed collaboratively by academic experts and industry leaders, Built to Last is flexible and adaptive—guiding internal teams to uncover root causes and implement custom-fit strategies that strengthen culture, morale, and long-term performance.
If you’re looking to invest in your people and build a workplace where safety, mental health, and well-being are part of the foundation, Built to Last delivers the structure and tools to make it happen.
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Built to Last follows a simple, structured process to help your company tackle real challenges in safety, mental health, and well-being. First, you plan by forming a dedicated task force, a small team of frontline leaders, supervisors, and staff, who receive specialized training to lead the effort and build buy-in across the company. Your task force and jobsite leaders train in practical leadership skills that drive positive change on the job. Before starting the next step, the task force identifies a specific issue your team wants to solve.
Next comes the design phase—a 5-session design sprint where the task force works together to create and test a custom-fit solution – informed by workforce feedback and supported by jobsite leadership. Once the prototype is ready, you implement it across your job site(s) with ongoing guidance and support. Finally, you evaluate progress using employee feedback and data to measure impact and refine processes over time.
Challenges the Built to Last toolkit addresses:
- Lack of leadership support for safety, mental health, and wellbeing
- Poor employee engagement in safety, mental health, and wellbeing policies and programs
- Poor teamwork and ineffective safety and health committees
- Ineffective safety, mental health, and wellbeing solutions
- Solutions That Fit Your Company: You know your crews best. We help uncover issues and implement changes that boost safety, morale, and productivity.
- Real Tools for Real Challenges: From design sprints to leadership training, every step is grounded in your daily operations — not theory.
- Developed Collaboratively by Industry Leaders & Experts: Built to Last combines lessons learned from proven programs — like Foundations for Safety Leadership (FSL) and the Healthy Workplace Participatory Program (HWPP) — and was shaped with input from an industry advisory board including safety leaders, mental health experts, and frontline supervisors.
In the News
CHWE Researchers Launch Worker Well-Being Study in Construction
Researchers to explore strategies to improve construction worker safety
Workplace Mental Health at Risk as Key Federal Agency Faces Cuts
Our team
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Natalie Schwatka, PhD
Project PI; Assistant Professor (CHWE); Director of the Total Worker Health Certificate Program
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Liliana Tenney, DrPH, MPH
Co-Investigator; Assistant Professor and Director of Outreach and Programs (CHWE)
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Our partners
Jennifer M. Cavallari, ScD, CIH
Co-Investigator; Associate Professor (UConn); Co-Director of the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW/UConn)
Suzanne Nobrega, PhD
Co-Investigator; Co-Director and Outreach Director of the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW/UMass Lowell)
Serena Rice, MS
Co-Investigator; Project Manager for the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW/UMass Lowell)
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©2025, University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus.
Production of this document was supported by cooperative agreement U54OH012761 from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NIOSH.