The True Cost of Hidden People Blockers
In engineering and infrastructure, success depends not just on technical excellence, designs, materials or project scheduling – but critically on people, how they work together, how they think, and how culture enables (or blocks) performance. What often goes unseen are the hidden people blockers – behaviours, beliefs, communication breakdowns, and organisational habits that quietly sap productivity, inflate costs, and risk safety and innovation.
In this post, we’ll explore what hidden people blockers are, why they matter especially in regulated, high-risk, high-complexity engineering and infrastructure sectors, what costs they impose (both visible and invisible), and finally how you can calculate their cost in your organisation.
What are “Hidden People Blockers”?
People blockers are obstacles created not by machinery, supply chain or engineering challenges, but by people and culture. Here are common examples:
- Ambiguity in leadership roles or decision rights
- Lack of psychological safety (people afraid to speak up)
- Poor cross-functional communication or silos
- Resistance to change or entrenched “this is how we always do it” mindsets
- Inadequate feedback loops – learning from mistakes is slow or ineffective
- Ineffective conflict resolution and mistrust between teams
- Underdeveloped leadership capability to address behaviours
These blockers tend to be “hidden” because they show up in subtle ways: decisions delayed, rework, low morale, high turnover, errors or safety near-misses. They’re rarely spotlighted until major issues emerge.
Why These Blockers Matter in Engineering & Infrastructure
Engineering and infrastructure sectors are especially vulnerable to hidden people blockers because:
- Projects are often large-scale, capital-intensive, with high regulatory and safety demands
- Multiple disciplines & specialisms must coordinate (civil, mechanical, electrical, design, project management, etc.)
- Many dependencies & complex supply chains: if one team miscommunicates or delays, the ripple effects are large
- Long timescales: culture and behaviour issues accumulate, compounding cost overruns or design drift
- Changing contexts (regulation, environmental pressures, stakeholder demands, technology shifts) demand adaptability, and people blockers hinder adaptability
Use Our Hidden People Blockers Cost Calculator
The Cost of Hidden People Blockers: What You’re Really Paying
Here are the types of cost. Some are obvious; many are hidden.
| Type of Cost | Examples | Hidden & Hard-to-See Impacts |
|---|---|---|
| Direct Financial Costs | Delays, rework, overtime, contractor claims, error remediation | Budget overruns, payment of “safety premium” or redoing compliance work |
| Time Costs | Meetings that go nowhere, repeated clarifications, duplication of effort | Lost opportunity time, innovation or improvement that never happens |
| Human Costs | Low morale, burnout, turnover, lost talent | Costs of hiring/training replacements, institutional “memory loss” |
| Quality & Safety Risk | Mistakes, near misses, compromised quality, potential accidents | Long-term reputation damage, regulatory fines, insurance premiums |
| Innovation & Growth Costs | Slower adoption of better techniques, resistance to continuous improvement | Stagnation, lost competitive edge, inability to attract partners or funding |
These costs accumulate across phases of a project: from design → procurement → construction → commissioning → handover and operation.
Quantifying the Hidden Costs: What Does It Look Like in Numbers?
Here are some examples to show you what this looks like in practice:
- A 200-person engineering business loses 5% productivity because half the team hold back concerns in meetings. That’s tens of hours per person, multiplied by salary rates → potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds per year.
- A large infrastructure programme has 3 months’ delay due to miscommunication across contractors: the cost of mobilisation, penalties, increased labour costs etc.
- Replacements and rework after safety non-compliance: not just the cost of fixing the problem, but investigations, reputational damage, disruption, remedial training etc.
How to Calculate What People Blockers are Costing You
We’ve built a People Cost Calculator to help engineering and infrastructure leaders estimate how much hidden people blockers may be costing in their context.
Here’s what you’ll need:
-
Size of your team / organisation (number of people affected)
-
Average salary / cost per person per year
-
Estimate of productivity loss (e.g. percentage) due to blockers (e.g. delays, rework, meetings)
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Turnover rate & cost of replacing people
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Any known rework rates caused by human errors, such as quality issues.
Use Our Hidden People Blockers Cost Calculator
By entering your numbers, you can get a ballpark figure to show how much these “soft” costs are really costing and justify investment in coaching, culture change, leadership development etc.
Strategies to Reduce Hidden People Blockers
Once you’ve identified the costs and the blockers, how do you tackle them? Harrison Network helps organisations in industry change in these ways:
- Clarify purpose, roles & decision-rights across the organisation so ambiguity is removed (we’ve worked with clients in nuclear, civil infrastructure, manufacturing public and emergency services)
- Build psychological safety: structures, feedback loops, enabling safe spaces for raising issues early
- Improve cross-team communication, especially at key interfaces (e.g. design/construction, supply chain, stakeholder management)
- Develop leadership capability not just in delivering technical outcomes, but in enabling people to lead change, shift mindsets and coach behaviours
- Regular reflection & learning (post-project reviews, continuous feedback) so mistakes are caught early and culture shifts iteratively
Conclusion
Dealing with hidden people blockers are not just an HR or “nice to have” issue. They have real financial, safety, innovation, and sustainability implications. In engineering and infrastructure where the stakes are high, letting them persist carries risk and cost.
If you want to uncover what you might be losing, try our People Blockers Cost Calculator now. And if you’d like support in diagnosing, designing, and embedding change (leadership, behaviour, culture), the Harrison Network is here to help you move from hidden cost to high performance.
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