MISSISSAUGA, ONT. – North American real estate management company Morguard has been recognized as one of Canada’s safest companies for the seventh time in a row.
The company won its gold award from Canadian Occupational Safety for its continually improving in-house processes which the company cited as being crucial to its OHS strategy. It also made other improvements to its safety regime.
“We began on a very strong platform, designed and structured properly right from the get-go and we have built on that every year,” said John May, Morguard’s director of risk management and insurance. “It is a well thought out and structured way of looking at health and safety in a holistic manner.
According to Morguard, the system encourages a collaborative culture where employees share responsibility for one another’s safety and welfare. It also goes beyond the minimum safety requirements. Morguard’s team carries out an in-depth financial, physical and environmental analysis for each potential property acquisition. Its safety protocols are then tailored to the individual needs each property.
“You must develop the culture,” said May. “And I think that is where health and safety falls down or can be not as robust. It’s not just compliance with the law. You need to make sure you go beyond that and people need to know why. They need to have an understanding of why it should be important to them.”
The process has led to consistent improvement on key OHS metrics year-over-year.
Morguard also worked to develop a new communications plan to dispense key safety information at all its sites, tweaked its tool box talks to included often overlooked hazards, increased safety audits at sites and upgrade security programs. If an incident does occur, the event and lessons are documented and shared across all sites for supervisors and managers to use as a topic for discussion in safety meetings
“There is an enormous amount of pride and we are humbled to be awarded this seven years in a row,” said May. “It makes us want to do better and live up to the fact that we have been recognized. We certainly don’t take this for granted. We want to make sure we continue to do things to minimize risk and make sure people are safe and doing what they should be doing.”
Recent Comments
comments for this post are closed