During their 29th annual health and safety conference, WorkSafeNB recognized two New Brunswick companies for making vast improvements in their workplace health and safety records.

Foyer Ste. Elizabeth, a nursing home located at Baker Brook, near Edmundston, was lauded for making a leap from having a high accident frequency within its industry to becoming one of the safest nursing homes in the province within a few short years. But the commendation wasn’t the only reward the company saw; as a result of its improved safety record, its insurance premium has been reduced by $50,000 a year since introducing a safety program in 2004. The company has also reduced its injury frequency rate to a level 35 per cent below the provincial industry rate.

Irving Personal Care Limited, Canada’s only manufacturer of baby diapers and training pants, was touted by Worksafe NB as “an ideal example” of a company that puts safety first through on-the-job training and financial incentives. The plant operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week and employs 140 full-time workers. But while the company has doubled its workforce since it opened in 2004, it has also decreased its lost-time claims by about 53 %, and is now 33% below the industry average.

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WorkSafeNB is highlighting these companies to show that safety pays. Putting safety first is not only good for the health of the workers, but also for the bottom line.

The Ontario government has drafted legislation designed to encourage innovation that will help create more green jobs and boost Ontario’s economy, while simultaneously protecting workers’ health and the environment from dangerous toxins.

The province plans to invest $13.6 million in Greene Centre Canada, a project located at Queen’s University in Kingston, that will hopefully introduce new green chemistry discoveries made at Ontario universities to the marketplace faster, as alternatives to the toxic chemicals now in use.

Greene Centre Canada will be operated by Parteq Innovations and in its first five years, it’s expected to create several start-up companies and at least 250 jobs, while strengthening the global competitiveness of Ontario’s chemical industry. The global chemicals industry is one of the largest manufacturing industries in the world, with annual revenues of over $3 trillion and revenues in Canada of over $47 billion. The Ontario chemicals industry generates over $21 billion in annual revenues and employs about 41,000 highly skilled workers, who produce more than 70,000 different products.

The province is asking for public comment on the draft regulation that will spell out how industry must comply with the Toxics Reduction Act to help protect the health and environment. The draft regulation will be posted on the Environmental Registry until October 19, 2009. The Toxics Reduction Act and its regulations require about 2,000 facilities to report on the toxics they use, and create and prepare plans to reduce them. By doing this, they hope to promote the use of safer alternatives in the workplace.

For more information, click on the links for GreenCentre Canada, PARTEQ Innovations, and to see the bill on the Environmental Registry.

Alberta Occupational Health & Safety has recognized nearly 700 companies across Alberta for their superior health and safety records.

The agency made the announcement last week, praising all of the companies for placing major emphasis on safety, and for integrating safety into all phases of their operations, even in rough economic times. One of the main benefits of such recognition is that all such companies can use the 2008 Best Safety Performer logo, and let prospective workers know that these companies put a premium on making sure workers get to go home after a hard day’s work.

According to OH&S, to be recognized as a best safety performer, employers are required to meet specific criteria, including a current certificate of recognition from the department’s injury-reduction education program. They must also be able to claim 60 consecutive person-years worked with no disabling injuries, have no outstanding compliance orders from OH&S, no violations of the Occupational Health and Safety Act in the previous two years and no work-related fatalities in the previous three years. In other words, it requires a clean safety record.

If 700 Alberta companies can manage a clean safety record, why can’t most of them?

These 700 companies will be able to attract the best of the best to their workplaces, and they will be able to point to their stellar reputation for safety in their promotional materials. Once again, we see a demonstration that safety doesn’t cost companies. In the long run, a safe workplace pays.

For those who only consider the cost of a good safety program and not the benefits, consider this story.

While 238,000 businesses will be spared a premium increase for workers’ compensation insurance next year, Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board has announced that it will hit 36,000 businesses with significant increases. The increases will only hit those businesses with the worst safety record.

Faced with $5.5 billion less in reserves because of investment losses as a result of the current recession, the board was faced with having to increase premiums for the first time in many years. But instead of hitting everyone across the board, they decided to base increases on the safety record within a particular industry. The proposed premiums for 2010 range from 0.33 per cent of pay in communications industries to 16.5 per cent for demolition companies. Some business could see increases of as much as 10%.

Not only that, but with less money on hand and not enough coming in through premium payments to cover the estimated $25 billion in claims expected over the next 40 years, the WSIB may have to raise premiums for everyone, even those businesses with good safety records.

Now, a lot of businesspeople will complain and object to the premium increases, but in a way, the premium increases are their fault. Creating a safer work environment, and cutting the number of injuries would go a long way toward reducing the WSIB operating deficit. Currently, approximately 270,000 claims a year are approved. The board has had a goal of cutting injury claims by 7% a year, slashing administrative costs and keeping medical costs under control. The only one of those three they have been able to accomplish has been the reduction in injuries.

If you don’t like the prospects of workers’ compensation premium increases over the next few years, then do what you can to keep your workforces safe and healthy. Reduced claims will result in reduced premiums.

If you have ever wondered what makes one workplace safer than other workplaces, the answer is simple; it’s all about culture. If you’ve ever wondered why employees at some workplaces seem genuinely interested in the safety of everyone at the work site, it’s because of their culture. If you’re fascinated by organisations in which all workers feel safe while on the job, work in a safe manner, actually enjoy attending safety training and believe wholeheartedly in safety processes, it’s because it’s their culture.

Culture isn’t always about what you think. Many people think culture is all about where someone is from, what kinds of foods they eat, or where they go to church. But culture is all about environment, and a “safety culture” refers to an environment that is absolutely immersed in safe habits. Culture refers to what every employee believes, how they think and act, and what they perceive as important. In order to develop a true “safety culture,” all employees at all levels of a company, and not just workers on the active worksite, must perceive safety as one of the most important aspects of any project. All companies should create a “safety culture” approach that permeates the entire workplace. Not only does such a culture prevent accidents, it also saves the company money in many other ways.

All over the world, industries have considered the importance of culture to workplace safety. The purpose of developing a workplace culture, of course, is to make all projects safer, by integrating occupational health and safety guidelines into all aspects of decision making at all stages of all projects. In other words, if your goal is to create a safety culture, then everyone must consider safety in all stages of project planning and delivery.

It takes some time and significant investment to create a culture of safety in a company, but the payoff is tremendous. A virtually injury-free workplace is not impossible; in fact, with the right approach, it’s not only possible, but sustainable. But there are several steps that must be taken in order to get to the safety culture stage.

The first step, of course, requires comprehensive training. Employees must be told how to act and how to work in a safe manner. Then, the leadership of the company must clearly define each and every worker’s job, in detail. Safety processes must be included in the project planning process, and workers should be encouraged to provide input to the safety process. Project leaders should invite input from workers, then act upon and implement their suggestions into the systems and procedures in every project. At that point, workers don’t feel like hired help; they feel more like an important part of the process. This creates a culture of interdependence that is essential to a safety culture.

Once an interdependent culture has been established, all workers can be taught how safety is a critical to their role, and not just a small part of it. The key to creating a “safety culture,” and preventing injury is a sense of worker ownership in the process. Workers themselves should not only be part of the process of safety planning, they should be given responsibility for both the performance of safety processes they’ve had input into and the performance of the organisation as a whole. Along with a higher level of responsibility should come some autonomy, as well; workers themselves should be able to decide how to improve their own safety and their own roles, as well as how to improve the organisation’s performance.

It’s actually pretty simple. You should want to create a safety culture in your workplace. But in order to do so, everyone at every level of the company must have input. Plan safety into each project, and make workers a part of the decision-making process, and you’ll have a safety culture that can’t be beat.

If a workplace is to be successful at preventing accidents and injuries, it is often necessary to change an organization’s culture. Changing an organization’s attitude toward safety can be challenging, and effective, lasting change generally only happens when senior management makes an absolute commitment to adopting safety as a top priority. Unfortunately, many companies only commit to a safety culture when compelling evidence is presented that the accident rate is costing the company a large sum of money.

It’s best to change the workplace culture to one of safety before the numbers get out of hand. Instead of wasting company money paying for unnecessary accidents, it’s possible to spend far less in the short run and save far more in the long run by creating a safety culture. Change will come about only when managers, departments, employees whose behavior contributes to safety goals are trained properly and rewarded for their efforts. Likewise, there should also be immediate and meaningful consequences applied when careless behavior or negligence causes accident or injury. In other words, the best way to create a safety culture is to make it clear that workers and others will be rewarded for good deeds and punished for carelessness.

Every workplace has its own unique “culture,” so there is no specific set of standards for a proper safety culture. However, there are some characteristics that identify a safety culture, and all workplaces can aspire to these.

In a safety culture:

• Workers observe and correct hazards. Once a worker identifies a hazard, the correction is made and reported. This documentation, of course, serves to facilitate the company’s ongoing safety program by identifying potential or actual hazards and allowing for their correction.

• Workers always wear all appropriate protective equipment. They know which PPE to use for which task, how to use the appropriate equipment to do the task, how to maintain their PPE, and when to dispose of it safely.
  

• Workers have an active safety committee, and committee meetings are regularly scheduled and well-attended. The committee’s agenda is clear, with goals and performance expectations presented on at least an annual basis. The committee offers regular training in basic safety methods, and also specialized in-service training to deal with safety issues specific to the entity, a department or a program.

• Differing motivations require that the process of introducing a safety culture to a workplace will require that everyone address an array of motivations. Management motivation will be to see a reduction in the cost of insurance, while workers will want to feel safer and less likely to be injured, as well as to feel valued for their contributions when they identify and correct hazards.

Two of the best and most successful ways to embed safety into the workplace culture are to have a lead person for safety (safety coordinator) with authority to enforce safety standards and to have an active safety committee to conduct periodic reviews and training.

To effectively establish a safety culture at your workplace, it is necessary for all workers and supervisors to be involved and feel like a valuable cog in the safety machine.