WorkShift: Recent Episodes
Workers' Compensation Board of Nova Scotia
It’s been said that we learn from experience. But we can learn a lot more when we add the experiences of others to our own.
Stuart MacLean, CEO of the Workers’ Compensation Board of Nova Scotia, puts leaders in workplace safety on the mic – to talk health, safety, but most of all, leadership in a world that has changed forever. Hear the stories behind their successes, and their failures, and how they’re meeting the same challenges you may be facing.
Whether you’re a leader or someone who enjoys inspiring conversations, WorkShift will change the way you think about work.
To learn more visit: https://www.wcb.ns.ca/toolkit.aspx
In 2022, Nova Scotians lost around a million working days to workplace injury. That’s the same as nearly 200 people working full-time for a year. It has a huge impact on those individuals and their families, their workplaces, our healthcare system and the province as a whole.
As leaders, we have a responsibility to do everything we can to minimize that impact. On the frontlines of this work is, of course, our province’s doctors, who are often the first to see workers after an injury occurs. They play a critical role in helping to set workers on a path to a successful recovery and are leaders on the return-to-work team. At the same time, Nova Scotia’s physicians are focused on enabling a culture shift in our province to encourage our population to lead healthier, more active lifestyles.
Joining us for this episode is Dr. Leisha Hawker. This past June, Dr. Hawker wrapped up her term as the President of Doctors Nova Scotia, the province’s medical association that represents more than 3,500 physicians. Dr. Hawker is currently a practicing physician at the North End Community Health Centre, the Halifax Newcomer Clinic, and the Regency Park Opioid Use Disorder Clinic. She is a member of the Board of Directors for Doctors Nova Scotia, the Nova Scotia College of Family Physicians, and the Healthy Tomorrow Foundation.
We are also joined by Dr. Manoj Vohra, WCB Nova Scotia’s Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Vohra is also a practicing physician who served as the President of Doctors Nova Scotia from 2017-2018. As part of his role as CMO with the WCB, Dr. Vohra works closely with physicians throughout the province to help them support patients who have been injured at work.
In this conversation, we discuss the vital role that work plays in recovery, the long-term effects of being off work, how to support employees in returning to work and the importance of understanding the whole person when building a return to work plan.
Make sure you follow Workshift, a podcast from the Workers Compensation Board that helps to rewrite the narrative on what makes a healthy, safe and successful workplace.
In Nova Scotia and across Canada, we are facing an issue with the workforce that we have never really faced before. We simply don't have enough skilled workers to do the work that needs to be done. We don't have enough skilled workers to fill the jobs that are available across the country. At the WCB, we think that part of the solution to this problem might be right in front of us.
In Nova Scotia, more time is lost to workplace injury than it is anywhere else across the country. Almost a million days were lost last year to workplace injury. But what if we could keep those skilled workers safe and healthy at work? What if for those people who did have a workplace injury, we were able to bring them back into the workplace with new and different thinking that would keep them at work longer, and make sure that we have more people doing the jobs that need to be done.
Joining us today is Melissa Jenkins. Melissa is the Health and Wellness Manager for Emergency Medical Care. This is the group that operates ambulances and handles 811 and 911 calls in our province. This is an essential group for us as Nova Scotians. Melissa is really leading the way in new approaches to helping people return to the workplace safely in a timely way after a workplace injury.
Melissa is also a member of the First Responders Mental Health Steering Committee, along with Shelley Rowan, and through that forum works collaboratively with first responders and leaders from police, fire, nursing, corrections, labour and government, to develop tools and resources to help first responders maintain positive mental health throughout their careers.
In this conversation, Shelley and Melissa discuss the elements involved in the return to work process, including risk prevention in emergency medical roles, engaging employees while they are recovering and the importance of an individualized approach to support a successful return to work.
Make sure you follow Workshift, a podcast from the Workers Compensation Board that helps to rewrite the narrative on what makes a healthy, safe and successful workplace.
In the face of new challenges in the workforce, leaders are being asked to do more today to ensure their workplaces are more physically and mentally safer than ever before. With the exiting of Baby Boomers and industry labour shortages, leaders are being tested in new ways.
How do we ensure our skilled workers are healthy and safe at work? How do we have employees return to work in a meaningful way? How do we attract new workers with innovative technology on the rise?
Many leaders are turning to innovative approaches to help them face these challenges.
In episode 6 of our Workshift podcast, WCB CEO Stuart MacLean talks to MJ MacDonald, CEO of Construction Safety Nova Scotia about how leaders are leaning in to address our new workplace realities.
Driven by a passion for workplace health and safety, MJ MacDonald is forging a new path for safety in the construction sector. She has worked as a senior leader in the public and private sectors for three decades. Two years into her role as CEO at Construction Safety, she has led the organization in the development of its new strategic plan.
What they’ll talk about
To face new challenges, leaders need new ways to ensure safe workplaces to retain and attract new employees.
MJ and Stuart discuss the changing landscape of safety with an added awareness of mental health at all levels. That means, in part, matching the right people with the right jobs, helping employees see their value, and ensuring they have meaningful work.
MJ also stressed the importance of having a safety framework in place to make workplaces safer.
What you’ll learn
Mental Health Awareness in the Construction Sector
Safety Associations help to raise awareness, education and training at all levels by incorporating mental health supports and tools into all required courses. Normalizing this support provides a cumulative effect of awareness that will create open dialogue amongst workers.
New Solutions to New Industry Challenges
Obtaining a certificate of recognition makes companies 20% more safe than others, leading to greater work opportunities. Matching ability and knowledge to job openings across sectors will create work that is meaningful and will contribute to a prosperous economy.
The Exciting Future of Construction
Embracing innovative areas of technology in the workplace will help alleviate a lot of the pressure and forces on workers and bring greater efficiency to worksites and administrative functions. Adopting innovation in construction will also contribute to attracting new workers to an exciting industry.
A Safe Culture Starts with Leaders
Culture needs to start with leaders. It’s critical that leaders have words and actions that are aligned with their team’s values, with safety being the top priority. If leaders put themselves in the position of workers, this helps to enforce a simpler approach to safety: if it’s not safe for our families, it’s not safe.
Make sure you follow Workshift, a podcast from the Workers Compensation Board that helps to rewrite the narrative on what makes a healthy, safe and successful workplace.
Storytelling is one of the most compelling forms of communication and often the best way to ensure vital information is absorbed by the people you are trying to reach.
In episode 5 of our Workshift podcast, WCB CEO Stuart MacLean talks to Martin Lesperance about the effectiveness of storytelling in workplace safety, especially for those in leadership roles, and for young people who are just entering the workforce.
Martin Lesperance is a firefighter/EMR and paramedic who has become one of the leading safety speakers in North America. He deals head-on with the topic of workplace safety with a unique and humorous style and light-hearted approach, effectively conveying the message that safety is vital. He sees first-hand and on a daily basis the results that happen from a split second of carelessness, so he has dedicated his time to prevent injuries from happening in the first place, rather than respond to and attend to the injured person after they have been hurt.
Key quotes
“So you have to ask questions. And if you get that gut feeling like this is dangerous, don't let peer pressure force you into doing something that can ruin your life, or it can end your life.” Martin Lesperance
“Understand the impact that storytelling can have on leaders, being more authentic and creating these safe workplaces that we all would like to see for the families of people who are going to work. We want them all to come home safely at the end of the day.” Stuart MacLean
What they’ll talk about
Storytelling has always been fundamental to nations, societies, and culture because stories help us make sense of what's happening around us. Within organizations, stories can bring dry, abstract concepts and numbers to life, and make them more relatable. They can also help leaders, and in particular safety leaders, communicate better with the people that they lead.
Impactful Storytelling
Stories can often help those in leadership roles make connections and have influence when it comes to leading change. When it comes to conveying the importance of following safety protocols in the workplace, oftentimes, a compelling story is the only way to get the message through to workers.
Characteristics of a Good Safety Story
The most memorable stories are often short and have elements that made the news or have a famous person in them, so if you are able to tie a safety message into your story, you will have a better chance of ensuring it is getting through to your workers.
How to Add Stories to Your Leadership Toolbox
Management should work to create a culture where people aren't afraid to share their stories and own experiences of personal injury in order to get their employees thinking about the impact on their own lives and families if they didn't make it home today or ended up seriously injured.
Make sure you follow Workshift, a podcast from the Workers Compensation Board that helps to rewrite the narrative on what makes a healthy, safe and successful workplace.
Safety culture in the workplace guides what your people do when no one's looking. It’s shared perceptions, it’s beliefs, it’s attitudes. For industries that are grappling with labour shortages, building a strong safety culture has never been more important. But what does it mean to have a strong safety culture? How do you build one and more importantly, how do you measure and improve it? We invite you join us for a conversation around creating a strong safety culture with WCB CEO Stuart MacLean and his guest Dr. Mark Fleming, an internationally recognized researcher who aims to provide best practice guidelines and criteria for more successful safety programs.
Dr. Mark Fleming has been enhancing industrial health and safety management through applied psychology research for over two decades. He joined the Department of Psychology at Saint Mary’s University (SMU) in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2001, and in 2002 he was instrumental in founding the CN Centre for Occupational Health and Safety. He supervises the work of the safety culture team at SMU where researchers work in partnership with local, national, and international organizations to study and address safety issues. He's currently involved in researching safety culture in a wide range of industries, including rail, petrochemical, construction, and power generation, and he turns usable practices and guidelines from these industries into practical tools such as his Changing Minds Guide and the Cultural Maturity Model. He also advises several Canadian international organizations on safety, culture assessment and improvement, including the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Key quotes
“They want their employees to go home safely, and they want to do the right thing. But they often are working in this wrong framework where they're seeing safety as the absence of injury, and they don't sometimes see the conflicted messages that they themselves are sending.” Mark Fleming
“It's more important to reframe how you think about safety. So rather than thinking about it as the absence of injuries, to think about it as a presence of defences, the presence of the controls that are in place within our organization.” Mark Fleming
“What they need to do is go and ask the question about how are you doing this job safely? And how can I help you be safe?” Mark Fleming
“If an organization is having a safety challenge, they probably have some other challenges as well.” Mark Fleming
“Safety improvement is not a wham bam, let's get better in a one-off event, because it never lasts, it's about getting a little bit better every day.” Mark Fleming
What they’ll talk about
Research has shown that a safe environment makes workers happy, and happy workers are more productive. As our province embarks on an aggressive growth strategy to double our working population over the next four decades, businesses who make a visible commitment to safety and creating a safety culture will be the ones that attract and retain employees.
What you’ll learn
The Role of Senior Leadership
Senior leaders need to understand safety in a different way. Even if safety practices and guidelines are in place, if leaders are not talking about the importance of safety in the workplace, then they are not sending a clear signal to their employees.
Productivity vs Safety
Instead of thinking about safety as something you do, business need to think about safety as a way you do things. An organization that is safe is also efficient, and organizations that do safety very well, do planning and organizing very well too.
Don’t Focus on Injuries of the Past
Organizations need to start looking at the extent to which the controls are present within their workplace, rather than focusing on the limited number of injuries that happened in the past. You can learn from them, but if you only look at past injuries, you tend to miss the high potential injuries and are very unlikely to prevent future serious injuries and fatalities.
Make sure you follow Workshift, a podcast from the Workers Compensation Board, that's helping to rewrite the narrative on what makes a healthy, safe and successful workplace.
To learn more visit: https://www.worksafeforlife.ca/
Over the last 10 years the construction sector has seen significant progress in reducing injuries.
In fact, they had over 1500 time-loss injuries at one point, and now have less than 500 on an annual basis. We're seeing improvements because people want to see real change. And in construction, leaders have moved from knowing about safety, to really caring about it.
A shift in safety culture doesn't come easy. But when it does, we can point to one thing that’s made the biggest difference, and that's strong leadership.
There's a role for all of us in creating psychologically safe workplaces.
"Organizations need to be very deliberate in making sure that people's psychological strength and fitness is supported and developed." Dr. Jackie Kinley.
Join us today in this amazing conversation with some amazing leaders around workplace psychological safety. Dr. Jackie Kinley, the Atlantic Institute for Resilience, and Corporal Deepak Prasad, with the RCMP, are here to share their perspectives about Psychological Safety In The Workplace.
"The number one thing that we have to remember, is that a person coming through a door, that person coming into your office ... stop and remember that they are a human being." Cpl. Deepak Prasad.
This is WorkShift, a podcast from the Workers Compensation Board of Nova Scotia.
To learn more visit: https://www.worksafeforlife.ca/
May 9, 2022 marks the 30th anniversary of the Westray mining disaster where 26 Miners lost their lives.
The disaster left an indelible mark on the province and prompted major changes to workplace health and safety. Today, we have half the number of workplace injuries. We have better awareness, better safety programs, better adherence to safety legislation. A shift in focus that puts safety before profits. If there's a silver lining in Westray it's that it gave us a deeper understanding of what can happen when we don't put safety first.
One of the biggest changes to come from Westray was Bill C 45. It made gross negligence, that leads to grievous bodily harm in the workplace an offense under the Criminal Code, punishable by jail time. In this episode we're going to talk about the legacy of Westray and what we can do to eliminate workplace tragedies.
Danny Cavanagh, President at Nova Scotia Federation of Labour, and Alex Keaveny, Senior Crown Counsel at Public Prosecution Service, join us today to discuss the Westray mining disaster, the changes it brought about and opportunities for continued safety commitment and improvement.
Whether you’re a leader or someone who enjoys inspiring conversations, WorkShift will change the way you think about work.