www.safestemployers.com 5
building a safety culture, etc.
There was truly something for everyone.
And what is so unique about safety professionals is that they truly love helping
each other out, and sharing with each other — because safety is everyone's concern.
Minow spoke of the value of sharing among safety professionals. This is a senti-
ment shared by a lot of our winners and nominees who say that safety is not propriety
and that organizations should share their best practices — especially amid COVID:
"When it comes to safety, we can all do better by sharing what we do to keep
people safe and healthy, including mental health and wellness."
David Gandossi, CEO and President, Mercer International — and winner of CEO
of the Year — echoed the sentiment.
Speaking about his journey in health and safety, he says that he reached out to
various safety leaders when he was building his organization's safety program: "When
I became CEO, I recognized that our safety performance wasn't where it needed to
be."
"One nice thing about health and safety," says Gandossi, "is that everybody is
willing to share."
Leadership
During the pandemic, being a safety professional has been an especially tough gig:
"Especially for the services sector, it can be extremely challenging to keep up with
all the specific requirements and regulations manually. By sponsoring this award, we
recognize the exceptional performance of the professionals hard at work keeping
their facilities safe," says Avetta, who kindly sponsored our award for Safest Employer
in the Services Sector.
METHODOLOGY
NOMINATIONS
The call for nominations was open to all occupational health and
safety (OHS) professionals, teams, companies and organizations
— including industry service providers — from across Canada.
Nominations were open from 22 February, 2021 to 23 April, 2021.
RESEARCH
The Canada's Safest Employers Awards team conducted research
and drew knowledge and information gained through Canadian
Occupational Safety to verify and support nominations received.
Shortlisted nominees were required to complete a detailed
submission and an employee perception survey that required a
minimum threshold of employee respondents.
FINALISTS
After all submissions were considered and research was completed,
finalists were selected in each category and notified via e-mail or
phone. Finalists were officially announced in July 2021 on the event
website and promoted by Canadian Occupational Safety.
JUDGING
All submissions were forwarded to the independent
judging panel comprising esteemed experts,
thought leaders and veterans in and around the
OHS profession. The panel assessed and voted
for their winners in each category according to
the relevant category criteria. Their judgment
was impartial, balanced, incisive and fair. Any
judge with conflict of interest in a category
would have recused themselves from judging
that category.
WINNERS
Using a simple points system to aggregate the
judges' votes, the finalist with the top score in
a category was named winner. Winners were
announced at the awards show on October 21,
2021 and on the Canada's Safest Employers
Awards website and Canadian Occupational
Safety.
