Targeting high-hazard sectors is one of the key priorities in the Ontario Ministry of Labour (MOL)’s occupational health and safety (OHS) strategy. One of those sectors is construction. Although the construction sector makes up only 6.7 per cent of Ontario’s employment, it accounts for about 30 per cent of all work-related traumatic fatalities and occupational disease fatality claims in the province.
To address the sector’s high fatality and injury rate, the MOL released its Construction Health and Safety Action Plan in May of this year. The first recommendation in that plan is to create a culture and climate of safety within construction to promote the importance of OHS.
Dr. Linda M. Goldenhar, Director of Research and Evaluation at CPWR—The Center for Construction Research and Training in Silver Spring, Maryland, is an expert in the safety culture and climate of construction workplaces. Her extensive research in the U.S. construction sector has culminated in practical tools to improve safety outcomes through improved safety culture, climate and leadership.
What can we learn here in Ontario from this research? Come find out at this year’s annual Alf Nachemson Memorial Lecture, hosted by the Institute for Work & Health (IWH). Dr. Goldenhar, this year’s invited speaker, will talk about the research that led her team to develop, first, a workbook to help strengthen jobsite safety climate by improving performance in eight areas identified as leading indicators of health and safety outcomes and, more recently an online tool that assesses a workplace’s safety climate maturity. Dr. Goldenhar will also share preliminary evaluation findings of a program that she and her team developed to improve jobsite supervisory leadership—one of the eight safety climate leading indicators identified as critical by construction stakeholders.
Join us for an evening of learning and discussion as Dr. Goldenhar explores the exciting prospect of improving outcomes in high-hazard industries such as construction by improving safety climate and safety leadership. You won’t want to miss this annual lecture, one of the most important networking events of the year in Ontario for policy-makers, researchers, employers, workplace representatives and other stakeholders in the field of work injury and disability prevention.