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Construction has always understood that safety doesn’t happen by accident.
It’s built through shared standards, consistent practices, and leaders who take responsibility for the environments they create. Hardhats and harnesses are visible proof of that commitment, but they’re not the whole story.
For years, one of the industry’s greatest risks has lived beneath the surface.
Construction continues to face one of the highest suicide rates of any profession. Behind those numbers are people, crews, companies, and families carrying pressure that often goes unseen. Many leaders know this not as a statistic, but as lived experience through colleagues lost, conversations avoided, or moments when it became clear that existing systems weren’t enough.
Two and a half years ago, that realization sparked a different kind of conversation.
Mercury Creative Group’s founder and lead brand strategist began working alongside AGC of Minnesota CEO Tim Worke to help bring a vision to life—one rooted in a simple but powerful belief: mental health is not separate from safety. It is safety. What started as an idea quickly became a shared commitment among industry leaders who understood that meaningful change would require more than awareness. It would require alignment.
That work became the foundation of the Minnesota Construction Mental Health Alliance—a leadership-driven, statewide effort designed to embed mental health into the fabric of how construction operates in Minnesota, from job sites to policy discussions.
Community Is Not a Feeling. It’s Infrastructure.
From the beginning, Mercury’s role has been to help leaders move from concern to coordination.
Through facilitated strategy sessions, audience alignment, and brand and messaging development, Mercury helped convene contractors, labor leaders, project owners, and industry associations around a shared purpose. The focus wasn’t on creating another program. It was on building the conditions for trust, participation, and accountability so that mental health could be addressed collectively.
The Alliance reflects that approach.
It is not an awareness campaign. It is not a standalone initiative. It is a leadership table where decisions are shaped by impact on people, where listening informs action, and where responsibility for change is shared across the industry.
Alignment Creates Momentum
That collective effort recently reached an important milestone.
The AGC of Minnesota Foundation was awarded a $450,000 state grant through the Minnesota Department of Labor & Industry to support suicide prevention and mental health integration across the construction workforce. The funding will expand construction-specific suicide prevention training, embed mental health education into apprenticeship programs reaching more than 1,500 apprentices statewide, and support the continued leadership work of the MN Construction Mental Health Alliance.
But funding alone doesn’t create change.
What makes this work lasting is the shared understanding that leaders don’t wait for permission to care for their people. They build systems that make care possible.
Through ongoing facilitation with the Alliance Strategy Team, Mercury continues to help guide conversations at the leadership level: clarifying priorities, supporting fundraising and engagement, refining the Alliance’s identity and website, and ensuring that momentum translates into measurable, systemic progress.
Values Practiced Together
At Mercury, we believe community is where shared values become aligned action for meaningful change.
The Minnesota Construction Mental Health Alliance is proof of that belief in practice. It shows what happens when leaders across roles and organizations choose alignment over fragmentation, transparency over silence, and shared responsibility over isolated effort.
This work belongs to the industry because people are willing to show up, listen, and act together.
Safety has always been strongest in construction when it’s shared.
Now, the definition of safety is expanding—grounded in the same principles that have always guided the industry forward: leadership, accountability, and care for the people beside us.
That’s how lasting change is built.
Let’s talk about what building the right infrastructure for change could look like in your organization.
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