Workplace disability management
More and more Canadian workplaces are setting up accommodation and return-to-work (RTW) programs to help ensure employees with work-related and non-work-related injuries and illnesses are able to remain at work or return to work as quickly as they are safely able to do so. The Institute for Work & Health (IWH) conducts extensive research into the workplace policies and procedures that most effectively help workers safely remain at and return to work, as well as system-level programs (e.g. those offered by workers’ compensation boards) that support workplaces in doing so. This research also explores life-course issues, work disability trajectories, RTW prognostic factors, and the scope and impact of chronic, episodic and other conditions that are not necessarily caused by work, but affect the ability of people to find and keep work.
Latest news and findings
Draft strategy on improving employment of people with disabilities now available for feedback
Public consultation is now under way on a draft strategy for building an inclusive workforce—one where people with and without disabilities have the same choices in their jobs and careers. The organizations behind the draft strategy, hosts of the Disability and Work in Canada 2018 conference held last December in Ottawa, are hoping to gather input on the document from as many perspectives as possible.
Find out more
RTW outcomes improve after WSIB implements two of IWH’s Seven Principles in regional assessment service
In 2013, Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) put two of IWH’s Seven ‘Principles’ for Successful Return to Work into practice when it introduced changes to the medical assessment service offered at its Regional Evaluation Centres. The new service integrates return-to-work (RTW) planning and enhances communication among health-care providers, the WSIB and the employer, with the worker’s participation. In a new impact case study, we look at the difference in recovery and RTW outcomes after the changes were put in place.
Read the impact case study
Helping young adults with disabilities enter the job market
It’s such a crucial time in one’s life, those early years when young adults find their first jobs and start making their way in the working world. For young people with a disabling health condition, it can be a frustrating time of finding barriers at every turn. What programs can help these young adults enter the labour market? In a recent IWH Speaker Series presentation, Dr. Arif Jetha shared findings from a systematic review.
Conference to continue work on national strategy on work and disability
Disability and Work in Canada 2018, taking place December 3-4, 2018 in Ottawa, will engage delegates in reviewing and building consensus around a proposed national strategy to improve the level of employment among people with disabilities in Canada. The conference is being hosted by the Disability and Work in Canada Steering Committee, which includes among its members a number of executive members of the Centre for Research on Work Disability Policy, a pan-Canadian, multidisciplinary research centre established in 2014 and headquartered at the Insitute for Work & Health.
Learn more about the conference
Institute accepting applications for post-doctoral Mustard fellowships in work and health
New researchers with an expertise in social, behavioural, organizational, clinical and/or population health sciences are invited to apply for a post-doctoral Mustard Fellowship in Work & Health. The Institute is looking for recent PhD graduates with an interest in doing research related to one of its two overarching priorities: work as a determinant of health and health as a determinant of work. The deadline for applications is Friday, December 14, 2018.
Learn more and apply here
