Safety Matters

This Safety and Health Week, our focus is on psychological safety

For so long, say the words “workplace safety,” and people think hardhat and work boots. That’s changing—and not too soon.

Of course, this week and always, you still need to keep your workers physically safe. Fall arrest, slips and falls, safe movement through safe work design—that all still matters. In fact, it’s critical. We’ve got lots of resources to help.

It’s just that, especially as September approaches and gradual onset psychological injuries become compensable, there’s a new focus on preventing these types of injuries.

And you know what? It turns out that many of the systems that work in physical injury prevention also work in psychological injury prevention. Of course, they’re different in many ways, but they share similar principles: Being aware of things that can hurt our workers and taking the proper steps to prevent them.

“Improving psychological safety in a work setting involves taking precautions to avert injury or danger to employee psychological health that is within the influence and responsibility of an employer,” reads the excellent resource Workplace Strategies for Mental Health, free from Canada Life. “Psychologically healthy and safe work environment is one that promotes employees’ psychological well-being and actively works to prevent harm to employee psychological health due to negligent, reckless, or intentional acts.”  

Many employers tell us they don’t know where to start. There’s so much information out there—what should they do first? 

That’s why we’re starting this Safety and Health Week by sharing five key resources to get you going:

• The National Standard
• Guarding Minds @ Work
• 13 Factors
• Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety
• Department of Labour, Skills and Immigration (LSI)

The Standard itself is a great place to start. And, thanks to our colleagues at the CCOHS, many free courses are available—why not ask your leaders and employees to attend them this week?

There is also lots of other content to be found on the Healthy Workplaces section of our own website, well worth your time exploring.

We’ve got more content coming—watch this space this week and always as we continue our work together to protect Nova Scotians from the impact of workplace injury—both physical and psychological.