CSSE e-Lert:
Member Update from President of the Board
May 5, 2022
Safety and Health Week: Renewing our commitment
This week, all across the country, CSSE chapters and partners have been hosting a number of networking and professional development events to bring our community together.
Safety and Health Week is an important opportunity to raise awareness in our communities—as workers, family members, employers, and caregivers—and to collaborate to find ways to reduce and, one day, eliminate severe workplace injuries and illnesses.
It is also an opportunity to renew our individual commitment as industry leaders back to our profession as we advance our one goal: ensuring our colleagues make it home safe at the end of the workday .
What Safety and Health Week means to me
For me, Safety and Health Week is an important opportunity to speak about the tragedy and prevention of workplace injury.
My mother was a nurse, someone who eased people’s pain every day. Her example inspired me over the years to find and promote ways to prevent pain. And although I have never personally experienced the kind of loss that a workplace fatality causes, and hope I never have to, I have witnessed the kind of pain and incredible disruption it causes. This kind of grief is not something I ever want to experience, especially in the career I’ve chosen.
So many consequences flow from workplace death and injury: the loss of freedom, of income, and of self-esteem, as someone’s ability to contribute to their family and community is diminished or eliminated. And the feeling of shame: so many injury survivors have described to me how, after an injury occurs, they have felt such deep-rooted shame. These stories rattle me to the bone, spurring me to re-examine my own personal care habits and to work harder to collaborate in the push for injury reduction and health and safety reform in the workplace.
As health and safety professionals, we understand the mechanisms of injury, we understand human ergonomic interfacing and fitting the work to the worker, and we know how to identify occupational diseases and their causes. More importantly, we have access to workers and their working environments. We are able to educate and empower workers to be mindful of their tasks and their interactions within both static and dynamic working environments. Through working hard to raise both individual awareness and employer responsibility, we can continue to reduce the frequency and severity of injury and illness in the workplace—together.
Reflections during Safety and Health Week
In next week’s e-Lert, I will share my reflections from this week, as I have had the opportunity to connect with members and our stakeholders. I am so proud to serve as President of the CSSE Board and to play a unifying role at the frontlines, raising awareness about our industry.
Have you attended a Safety and Health Week event? What have your reflections and insights been? Share them by:
- Tagging CSSE us on Twitter @CSSE ( twitter.com/CSSE) or using the hashtag #SafetyandHealthWeek
- Joining the community on LinkedIn. Go to www.linkedin.com/company/canadian-society-of-safety-engineering
- Contacting us at any time at [email protected]. We want to hear from you!
CSSE relies on you
CSSE has been the leading voice of the safety industry in Canada for more than seven decades. We are committed to playing a vital role in achieving this goal by shaping and defining the health and safety profession, providing education about health and safety, and advancing our members’ careers.
As a volunteer-led, membership-based organization, we rely on your leadership and the gift of your time, energy, and passion. You can renew your personal commitment during Safety and Health Week by:
- Attending a professional development and networking event and bringing along a friend. New national, regional and Chapter events are being added daily on the full event calendar
- Referring a colleague to become a member of CSSE and help grow our network!
- Volunteering for a leadership opportunity. A call is still open for national working groups
Building Our Collective Story
Over the last two years, as we weathered the pandemic storm, we’ve also witnessed a renewed global emphasis on health, safety, and the environment, drawing into the limelight health and safety practitioners and professionals.
As a member of the CSSE, you are part of a Canadian network connected from coast-to-coast-to-coast and comprising passionate and dedicated professionals.
We are united at the frontlines of workplaces with one dedicated focus: ensuring our colleagues make it home safe at the end of the workday.
We have been thinking ahead and considering every detail to make sure that common causes for accident prevention are not overlooked so that we can keep our community safe and healthy.
This is no small task on any given day, but it all became more relevant, tried, and tested during the pandemic.
CSSE will be calling for your story so that we can start to build a living archive of the voices of health and safety professionals. Find out more in next week’s e-Lert.
Sincerely,
Christl Aggus
President of the Board
CSSE