About 70 residential work sites visited during recent campaign
"I want to get back home to my family every day. I make sure to always wear my PPE, that I am tied off when I need to be and keep a tidy site,” said Brandon Padget of Hyde Construction in Regina.
Hyde Construction was just one of the 14 companies featured as part of a WorkSafe Saskatchewan’s and the Saskatchewan Construction Safety Association (SCSA)’s recent awareness campaign in promoting fall protection on residential construction sites.
From August to October, representatives from both associations visited 70 sites looking for fall protection in action. Each site where workers were found wearing their personal protective equipment (PPE) and using fall protection was given donuts and coffee for their safe practices.
“We really wanted to highlight the positive. Often in safety it’s the negative that comes to light,” said Annette Goski, manager of prevention services at the Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board. “It’s pointing out the right way to do things.”
Fall protection is still not always used in the workplace, she said, adding that 23 per cent of serious injuries in all industries are due to falls. Through this campaign, WorkSafe wanted to “take a piece of the pie” and see if it could make a change in the number of people wearing fall protection on the job.
“We even had some safety supervisors share that having the team visit their sites has been excellent and they were very happy to have us stop by with coffee,” Goski said.
The decision to recognize companies publicly through social media — and radio spots — was made in hopes of creating a broader awareness of the importance of fall protection.
“It really is about educating everybody about health and safety,” Goski said. “Everyone has kids or husbands or whatever working out there and if we can make sure we start educating everybody about this then people will start asking the right questions when they go to job interviews or when they are sending their kids out to work.”
