If you put people first, everything else will fall into place – including safety. That’s the message from Howard Behar, the former president of Starbucks who helped grow the company from 28 stores to more than 15,000 on five continents.
Author Archives: Susan
It was exciting to see history in the making on Oct. 27 when 23 CEOs and senior managers signed BC’s first safety charter – similar to documents signed in Newfoundland Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Saskatchewan.
NAOSH Week organizers suggest different ways to participate – one of which is “setting new goals for workplace health and safety.” That’s what the health and safety committee did at Tourism Whistler, winner in BC’s NAOSH Week Tourism/Hospitality category.
I found lots of great stories to track down and tell after looking at the list of NAOSH and Canadian Society of Safety Engineering (CSSE) Achievement Recognition awards. Winners were honoured October 20 at the 2011 Safety Forum and Awards ceremony in Langley, and I’ll be following up to find out more about what they did.
Sharon Barbour met with hundreds of young people when she worked for the BC Federation of Labour’s Young Workers program a few years ago. She was always very clear about the worker’s right to refuse unsafe work, but many were already concerned that speaking up would mean losing their jobs.
“Many supervisors recount stories of fear when they took over. They talk about how scared they were of making a mistake and not really knowing where to turn when they had questions or problems,” says safety officer Mike Tasker, one of the people who helped create WorkSafeBC’s new online course for supervisors.
A workplace safety magazine’s first “Canada’s Safest Employers List” drew nominations from more than 100 employers who claimed to go above and beyond in promoting safe workplaces.
Making a construction worker costume for Halloween is not only fun for kids, it’s also a chance for parents to gently introduce the importance of personal protective equipment.
Many injured workers know the feeling of pain that shuts down their lives, but it usually goes away – though some cases it doesn’t. Chronic pain is on the agenda at the federal level, and with any luck, we’ll soon see relief for an estimated 1 in 5 people in BC who suffer from chronic pain.
I will join hundreds of thousands of my fellow British Columbians at 10:20 a.m. on October 20, 2011 to “Drop, Cover, and Hold On” during the Great British Columbia ShakeOut. This annual event will be held the third Thursday of October.
