Health and safety management
This page provides insight to succeed in the course MANA 445 Health & safety management taught in the Fall of 2022 by professor Yu-Shan Hsu. Your final project guidelines were reviewed by Olivier Charbonneau, Senior Librarian at Concordia University, in order to identify the most important sources as well as the best databases to search for insight on occupational health and safety (OHS). Please refer to the Fall 2022 Project Handout on Moodle for course MANA 445 Health & safety management for more information about project guidelines.
Using Google is insufficient to succeed in this project, you have to identify the best sources – many of which are licensed by your university library or hidden deep inside a public website. Specifically, you must use sources or databases from Concordia University Library’s Business Research Portal. Incidentally, your library holds over 200 books (many of them in electronic format available from your home) published in the last five years on occupational health and safety !
OHS information from the Internet
Of all the websites you could visit on the Internet for this project, government agencies as well as trade associations constitute the most salient sources.
In and of itself, Google is neither a source, nor does it expedite your capacity to succeed in this course. In fact, it will only point out pages that it considers popular enough to warrant your attention. This is problematic because popularity is not a relevant metric for sources in a university assignment. You require authoritative sources. Long, sometimes dry and tedious reports usually don’t make it to the top of search results in Google, simply because they lack the features of a popular page or site. So, you have to be both wiser and smarter than Google’s search algorithm. As a general rule of thumb, it is more efficient to seek out the websites of government agencies as well as trade associations in your field of interest rather than searching for “information” in Google. This is the strategy used in identifying all the sources on this guide.
Government agencies
Before we begin, please note that the federal Canadian Centre for Occupational Health & Safety (CCOHS) as well as the provincial Commission des normes de l’équité de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST) offer extensive information directly on their website. You are expected to explore these websites in depth prior to starting your project. Information from these sources will not be repeated on this guide.
In addition, the Institut de recherche Robert-Sauvé en santé et en sécurité du travail (IRRST) is a provincial non-profit organization funded by the CNESST, providing independent research on organizational health and safety in Québec. IRRST offers extensive reports and tools to research OHS, in both English and French. Again, information from this source will not be repeated on this guide as you are expected to make heavy use of this website.
OHS Information from trade associations
Trade associations are organizations that cater to the needs of corporations. This often implies holding trade shows, publishing trade journals, commissioning studies or reports as well as lobbying the government. All of these processes imply that trade associations may hold the information that you so desperately seek to craft your reports and papers. When you locate a trade association’s website, make sure to visit their publications as well as the list of members, when available. You may even consider volunteering for some of them, that’s a great method to extend your network of contacts.
IRRST, the independent research center funded by CNESST, offers an extensive list of useful websites, including sites providing statistics and lists of trade associations.
OHS Canada, a trade publication, provides a list of provincial safety associations for various trades or industry. These trade associations may provide reports, studies and other publications of interest for your project.
Employee unions are another obvious trade association, with a specific focus on worker rights, including OHS issues. For example, the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), a large union based in Québec, offers an extensive OHS portal (in French only). Try to see if your organization is unionized as well as whether a large client, supplier or competitor has unions.
Insight for the Audit Report (Part I: Descriptive Report)
For most sections of the audit report, you have to search for the best information from a variety of sources outside of required reading materials or whatever you stumble upon in Google. Below, we have identified the best strategies to maximize the discovery of these sources.
Description of the organization
Describing an organization entails much more than simply stating facts about its context or its history that you would get from their annual report or their website. Each organization has a primary line of business, which is loosely defined as the method by which it acquires most of its revenue. This primary line of business is the basis by which statisticians file businesses by industry. When describing an organization, you must identify its industry and provide insight about the industrial structure.
IBISWorld is a licensed database from the library. It provides information about Canadian, US and Chinese industries in 20+ page reports. Many elements you need to draft your SWOT analysis will come from this report. Locate the correct industry for your organization and locate the appropriate industry report in IBISWorld. Excellent papers will use more than one IBISWorld report, examining reports up or down the supply chain.
Find recent trade or news articles about your organization, its industry, its competitors or market leaders. ProQuest Business Databases is a comprehensive database for news, trade or peer-reviewed articles. It includes many sources from Canada. When using ProQuest, you should filter by source type for articles from trade publications, scholarly or academic journals or newspapers. You can also search for news articles in French from newspapers in Québec in Euréka.cc.
You can use Google to find news or insight about your organization. Make sure you compare and contrast your results with those from ProQuest Business or Euréka : only use the most credible or trustworthy articles !!!
Hazard identification
As with the previous step, all students are expected to use trade or news articles about potential hazards. In this case, you are looking for articles which would have covered hazards or safety risks for workers or employees in the organization’s industry. You can use the advanced search on ProQuest Business Databases to perform a very detailed query. Once you launch the search, you can filter the results for articles in the past few years by toggling the date range on the left-hand panel of the results page. Similarly, you can look at different source type from the results page: daily newspapers; trade journals; scholarly journals are the best options. Here is an example of a search for articles in ProQuest :
Here is a transcription of the search string inputted in the interface of ProQuest Business Databases for this example:
employe* OR worker*
AND: hazard* OR risk* OR Safet*
AND: restaurant* OR “food service” OR foodservice
AND: canad* OR quebec* or montreal*
Source: transcription of search string in Figure 1
Notice how each dimension of our project gets “translated” into a search strategy. Synonyms or words for the same dimension are added on the same line separated with the “OR” operator. Then, dimensions are combined between them with the “AND” operator. Additionally, you can reduce noise by adding a line and using the “NOT” operator (not in the example), to discard articles which contain a specific word.
Once you launch the search query, you will get too many results! Don’t panic, simply use the filters to toggle the date range and the source type.
In closing, it is recommended to canvas the literature BEFORE visiting your organization.
Risk assessment
In addition to reports or studies provided by CCOHS, CNESST, IRSST as well as sectorial OHS trade associations, you can search ProQuest Business Databases for insight into risk assessment. In this case, you should focus on peer reviewed or scholarly journals from the list of results (as opposed to news, trade or magazine articles in the previous step).
Insight for the Final Report (Phase II: prescriptive report)
Applicable laws and regulations
Health Canada provides a summary of federal regulations on occupational health.
CNESST provides a list of applicable provincial laws and regulations.
The Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) provides access to rulings from the federal Occupational Health and Safety Tribunal Canada as well as Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail. CanLII is an independent not-for profit organization funded by the fees paid by lawyers to their provincial bar associations.
Best practices
Entreprises Québec, a provincial government agency, provides a series of “best practices” for businesses in implementing OHS in the workplace (page in French only).
The provincial Ministère de la santé et des services sociaux (MSSS) unveiled, in 2019, an action plan to promote OHS in the workplace: Plan d’action national visant la prévention des risques en milieu de travail et la promotion de la santé globale 2019-2023. Although this document applies to the health sector in Québec, it provides an excellent example of what health professionals wish to implement in their workplace. Another interesting example of a policy for workers in a government agency was issued by Transport Québec: Politique ministérielle en santé et sécurité au travail March 2022).
In addition to all the previous sources and sites, which may provide insight to best practices, here is a list of books you can consult to ascertain best practices:
Audit of Occupational Health and Safety. (Vol. 1–1 online resource (28 pages)). (2019). Canada Border Services Agency; WorldCat.org. http://www.deslibris.ca/ID/10101747
Burke, R. J., & Richardsen, A. M. (2019). Increasing occupational health and safety in workplaces: Individual, work and organizational factors (Vol. 1–1 online resource). Edward Elgar Publishing; WorldCat.org. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=2283988
Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety. (2020). COVID-19: Workplace health and safety guide. (Vol. 1–1 online resource (14 pages)). CCOHS, Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety; WorldCat.org. https://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/201/301/weekly_acquisitions_list-ef/2021/21-06/publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2021/cchst-ccohs/CC273-2-20-2-eng.pdf
Carrillo, R. A. (2019). The relationship factor in safety leadership: Achieving success through employee engagement (Vol. 1–1 online resource). Routledge; WorldCat.org. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429057694
Dentch, M. P. (2018). The ISO 45001 Guidance on Building an Occupational Health and Safety Management System. (Vol. 1–1 online resource (144 p.)). Quality Press; WorldCat.org. http://public.eblib.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=6356773
Dollard, M. F., Dormann, C., & Awang Idris, Mohd. (2019). Psychosocial safety climate: A new work stress theory (Vol. 1–1 online resource (xvii, 449 pages) : illustrations). Springer; WorldCat.org. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20319-1
Goetsch, D. L. (2019). Occupational safety and health for technologists, engineers, and managers (Ninth edition.). Pearson; WorldCat.org.
Hudson, H. L., Nigam, J. A. S., Sauter, S. L. 1946-, Chosewood, L. C., Schill, A. L., & Howard, J. (2019). Total worker health (Vol. 1–1 online resource (xvii, 326 pages) : illustrations). American Psychological Association; WorldCat.org. http://content.apa.org/books/2019-36372-000
Jain, A., Leka, S., & Zwetsloot, G. (2018). Managing health, safety and well-being: Ethics, responsibility and sustainability (Vol. 1–1 online resource). Springer; WorldCat.org. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1261-1
Jones, S. A. (Lawyer), Murray, P. 1950-, & United States. Government Accountability Office. (2021). Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration: Occupational exposure to COVID-19; Emergency temporary standard (Vol. 1–1 online resource (4 pages).). United States Government Accountability Office; WorldCat.org. https://soton.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.heinonline.org/HOL/Index?index=gao/gaombi&collection=covidcol
Kloss, Diana., & Recorded Books, Inc. (2020). Occupational health law (Vol. 1–1 online resource). Wiley-Blackwell; WorldCat.org. https://rbdigital.rbdigital.com
Mansdorf, S. Z. (Seymour Z., 1947-. (2019). Handbook of occupational safety and health (Third edition., Vol. 1–1 online resource). Wiley; WorldCat.org. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=2095485
Olawoyin, R., & Hill, D. C. (2018). Safety leadership and professional development (Vol. 1–1 online resource). American Society of Safety Professionals; WorldCat.org.
Sadiq, N. (2019). Establishing an occupational health & safety management system based on ISO 45001 (Vol. 1–1 online resource). ITGP; WorldCat.org. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=2249485
Salvendy, G. 1938-, & Karwowski, W. 1953-. (2021). Handbook of human factors and ergonomics (Fifth edition, Vol. 1–1 online resource (xxiv, 1576 pages)). Wiley; WorldCat.org. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119636113
Turk, M. Follette. (2018). A History of Occupational Health and Safety: From 1905 to the Present. (Vol. 1–1 online resource (261 pages)). University of Nevada Press; WorldCat.org. http://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=none&isbn=9781943859719
Williamsen, M. M. (2021). Delivering safety excellence: Engagement culture at every level (Vol. 1–1 online resource). Wiley; WorldCat.org. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119772279
Ce contenu a été mis à jour le 2022-09-13 à 5:27 pm.