Program to facilitate collaboration between province's largest employers
The Manitoba government is partnering with Safe Work Manitoba to develop an industry-based safety program for self-insured employers that will facilitate collaboration between a number of Manitoba's largest employers — including municipal, provincial and Crown corporations — to identify gaps and support long-term approaches to reducing workplace injuries and illnesses, said Growth, Enterprise and Trade Minister Blaine Pedersen.
“The creation of an industry-based safety program will help to establish consistent safety practices and strengthen the culture of safety in provincial workplaces,” he said.
Industry-based safety programs deliver injury prevention services to employers in specific industries and can work with employers to help improve occupational health and safety by offering services that are customized to meet their industry’s unique needs.
The minister noted the creation of this new program will provide a path for Manitoba’s self-insured employers to become SAFE Work Certified, a voluntary provincial standard for occupational safety and health developed by SAFE Work Manitoba, built around the safety essentials of leadership commitment, hazard identification and risk control and worker participation.
The Manitoba government is the largest of a group of self-insured organizations that does not align to a single industry and therefore its operations do not fall within an existing industry-based safety program. The City of Winnipeg announced its support of this program earlier this year. The initiative is anticipated to formally start in early 2018, Pedersen said.
