The survey was conducted where 120 set of questionnaires were sent out to groups of respondents by postal mail for periods of 3 months and 52 sets (43.3%) were returned. After all the primary data had been collected and processed, appropriate analysis methods were applied. The analysis method in this research is mainly descriptive and the type of investigation is co-relational study. The analysis of the survey results made use of SPSS software.

7. Data analysis and discussion

Most construction projects depend heavily on labour and HRs, which are working there. Various types of HRs work in construction projects, such as engineers, project managers, counsellors, architects, and labour, but this research emphasizes the role of skilled labour and the ways companies or government can train them. However, the link between training labour and project effectiveness has not been considered sufficiently by the Iranian researchers. Most symposiums, researches, and surveys are done after an earthquake or some other disaster occurs. Unfortunately, as time passes many things are forgotten. Previous research indicates that there were many damages to the buildings during the earthquakes due to bad quality of construction [6], [2], [7] and [5]. It could be due to the lack of sufficient supervision [8] and [2], low quality materials [1], [3] and [4], unskilled labour, etc. In many cases, the destruction of buildings during the Bojnoord, Ardekul, Bam, etc. earthquakes in Iran, was mainly the result of unskilled labour. This shows that unskilled labour was the main reason for the low quality of construction of many buildings which were destroyed during the past earthquakes [1] and [2].

Regarding the above discussion, it seems necessary to research the lack of skilled workers in construction projects in different parts of Iran. In turn, this research concentrates on unskilled labour, and the methods, barriers, and practical solutions of training them. Regarding the large extent of construction projects and companies in Iran, the research was conducted based on information from selected construction companies (as mentioned earlier) in Mashhad.

Discussions regarding the research findings will be carried out as mentioned above. First of all, the study describes the organizational background and respondents’ occupations; because all analyses were based on respondents’ qualifications. This research has targeted top management levels in construction organizations.

As indicated earlier, the companies which have been surveyed in this research were registered in KCESO as the top grad companies. They were of four categories: governmental, semi-governmental, private, and others. Most of the respondents (69.9%) were in private companies. In contrast, 17.3% were in governmental companies, 1.9% in semi-governmental companies, and the rest (3.8%) in other areas. In addition, most of them (43.6%) were contractor companies, 23.6% were developers, 20% were consultants, and 12.7% were the project management companies. Consequently, most of the companies in this survey are private and contractor companies. In addition, the occupations of the respondents were 36.2% supervisors, 5.2% counsellors, 22.4% project managers, and 13.8% company managers. Other responsibilities (22.4%) make up a large group of the respondents, as they did not mention their responsibilities. The results show that most of the respondents in this survey are supervisors who are directly related with construction workers. Therefore, their responses and ideas have a momentous effect on this survey and confirming the credibility of the results of the study.

8. Research question one

8.1. Are the HRM practices in training labour used by construction firms in Mashhad, Iran?

The respondents of this survey were mostly private contractor companies with various building classifications such as official (27%), commercial (23%), and residential buildings (21%). Regarding Chart 1, the percentage of different types of labour in construction projects per day, skilled labour formed only 20% of Mashhad construction worker practitioners. In contrast, 50% of the labour forces were unskilled and 20% were semi-skilled. This implies that most of the workers involved in the construction projects of Mashhad were unskilled.