36 www.thesafetymag.com/ca
S P O N S O R E D S P E C I A L F E A T U R E
leadership is really making a difference
for employees.
Healthy and safety critical
in a pandemic
Most companies (92 per cent) said that
a strong culture of health and safety has
allowed their company to cope with the
unexpected. In fact, many of them (90
per cent) said the pandemic has drawn
more attention to OHS, with 86 per
cent of respondents saying that the
pandemic had raised the importance of
OHS within their organization.
Looking toward Canada's post-
pandemic landscape, 85 per cent of
those surveyed said that health and
safety will be more important than it
was before the pandemic. Importantly,
almost all those surveyed (99 per cent)
agree that health and safety is critical
for all businesses to be able to fully
open after the pandemic.
"The pandemic has forever transformed
the way all businesses operate, and WSPS
is no exception," says Brownell.
Post-pandemic concerns
Mental health has started to become a
key concern for health and safety
professionals over the past few years.
This has been accelerated by the
pandemic, as survey respondents called
it the top emerging concern of 2020 (70
per cent, a three-point increase,
compared to 2019). Employers are
recognizing more and more that mental
health, as well as stress management, is
very important to workplace culture and
engagement.
While post-pandemic recovery and
what that will look like is still very
much up in the air, there is no doubt
that strong health and safety leadership
will need to include a focus on
employee mental health.
COS
*Survey done in collaboration with Key
Media. These results are based on more
than 800 survey responses. The survey
ran from Sept. 28 to Oct. 29, 2020 and
targeted Canadian HR and
occupational safety decision-makers.
committed to health and safety," says
Lynn Brownell, president and CEO,
WSPS. "Having a health and safety
culture has helped leading survey
respondents to weather this storm."
Strong leadership in a pandemic
Strong health and safety leadership is,
as we have seen, essential in improving
injury rates and reducing costs. This has
come into even sharper focus during the
pandemic.
One of the biggest findings of the
survey is that those with leading health
and safety plans are almost twice as
likely (76 per cent vs 41 per cent) to
report low or reduced COVID-19 rates
as a benefit of their planning.
And, in fact, even those companies
that describe themselves as simply
"reactive" or "managing" see the
benefits of improved leadership when
facing a pandemic (with 62 per cent
and 66 per cent, respectively, reporting
low or reduced COVID-19 rates).
Now more than ever, strong safety
