Category Archives: Health and Wellness

Health & Safety, Health and Wellness, productivity

Are elderly construction workers sufficiently fit for heavy manual labour?

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Einar Jebens, Jon Ingulf Medbø and Kaj Bo Veiersted, National Institute of Occupational Health, Oslo, Norway; Asgeir Mamen, Norwegian School of Health Sciences, Kristiania University College, Oslo, Norway; and Oddvar Knudsen, Lia HMS, Trysil, Norway

This study analyzed the work ability of elderly construction workers. Forty male construction workers, 20 young (age < 33 yrs.) and 20 senior (age > 44 yrs.) workers, were tested regarding aerobic power (VO2max) and muscle strength. The aerobic demand of a number of tasks in construction work was measured and compared with the workers’ aerobic power. VO2max was higher for the young, and they performed better on most muscle-strength tests. The measurements showed that about half of the senior workers had to use more than 30 per cent of their maximum oxygen uptake on some tasks. In conclusion, because elderly construction workers decline in physical fitness, they are more exposed to overload when performing heavy manual work than are their younger peers. Increasing their individual fitness or adjusting their workload may be important for staying in the workforce for such workers. Construction workers must occasionally perform strenuous work tasks that may endanger their safety. This was more often the case for elderly workers investigated here. Elderly workers should therefore be particularly observant of their physical fitness and should possibly train during leisure time to improve their fitness.

Ergonomics, Volume 58, Issue 3, pages 450-462. Correspondence to: Asgeir Mamen, Norwegian School of Health Sciences, Kristiania University College, Oslo, Norway; email: asgeir.mamen@nhck.no.

Health & Safety, Health and Wellness

Combined effect of back pain and stress on work ability

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C. Oberlinner, M. Yong, M. Nasterlack, R.P. Pluto and S. Lang, Department of Occupational Medicine and Health Protection, BASF SE, Ludwigshafen, Germany

Back pain and occupational stress are known risk factors for absenteeism and presenteeism. In addition, the relationship between back pain (BP) and psychosocial stressors has been examined in numerous studies. This study’s aims were to examine the prevalence of BP and perceived stress among employees of different occupational status and to investigate their combined impact on work ability. A comprehensive survey combining questionnaire data and medical examination offered in one division of a major chemical company in Germany. Self-rated health and work ability were assessed using the Work Ability Index (WAI). A synergy index was used to assess a potential interaction between both exposures under an additive model. Of 867 voluntary participants, 653 returned complete questionnaires on BP and job-stress perception. Although occupational stressors were perceived differently, there was no difference in the prevalence of BP between the occupational groups. Back pain and stress perception are correlated with each other, and both are negatively associated with work ability. After adjustment for occupational status, demographic and lifestyle factors, researchers found a synergy effect of BP and stress perception with a modest-to-strong impact on declining WAI. Corporate health promotion interventions to reduce the impact of BP and stress perception on work ability should target both physical and psychological dimensions. Such interventions may be initiated in the context of regular (occupational) medical examinations.

Occ Med, Volume 65, Issue 2, pages 147-153. Correspondence to: M. Yong, Department of Occupational Medicine and Health Protection, BASF SE, GUA/CS, Carl-Bosch-Str. 38, 67056 Ludwigshafen, Germany; tel: +49 621 60 93860; fax: +49 621 60 43322; email: mei.yong@basf.com.

Hazmat, Health & Safety, Health and Wellness

White powder in envelopes sent to cabinet ministers turns out harmless

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QUEBEC CITY, Que. – Members and employees of the Quebec provincial cabinet suffered a temporary scare on March 5, after envelopes containing suspicious white powder and threatening notes were sent to the riding offices of four cabinet ministers. Infrastructure Minister Denis Lebel’s office in Roberval, north of Quebec City, received the first envelope around 10:00 a.m., according to information from the Quebec Provincial Police; the other envelopes went to the offices of International Aid Minister Christian Paradis, Small Business Minister Maxime Bernier and Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney. The offices were evacuated and three employees were sent to hospitals as a precautionary measure, but an analysis of the powder later showed it to be harmless. “We won’t be intimidated by this,” said Lebel in a press statement following the incidents. “We don’t get into politics to be threatened, to have our employees put at risk.” The incidents occurred on the same morning on which the Quebec national assembly received a hoax bomb threat, but there was no evidence yet of a link between the two events, federal officials told the media.

Health & Safety, Health and Wellness, productivity

Summit discusses ways to deal with work-related mental stress

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TORONTO, Ont. – Representatives from government, healthcare, social services, corrections, police, fire services and other sectors came together on March 5 for the Summit on Work-Related Traumatic Mental Stress. Recommended by the Ontario Ministry of Labour’s (MOL) October report, Roundtable on Traumatic Mental Stress: Ideas Generated, the summit allowed professionals to discuss possible ways to reduce the effects and stigmas of traumatic mental stress in the workplace. “The lessons learned and best practices shared here will propel sectors in which traumatic mental stress is prevalent to implement cultural and organizational change, with an emphasis on prevention, making workplaces healthier and safer,” provincial Labour Minister Kevin Flynn stated in a press release following the event. The summit included an opening address by former lieutenant-general Roméo Dallaire and talks by experts on innovative approaches to the issue. A backgrounder from the MOL noted that the Ontario government was investing $4.4 million into resources addressing operational stress injuries for Ontario Provincial Police officers.

Health & Safety, Health and Wellness, Workers Compensation

CUPE rep: WorkSafeNB rehab centre has “culture of fear”

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A representative of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) has spoken out to the media about allegedly poor conditions at WorkSafeNB’s Rehabilitation Centre in Grand Bay-Westfield, New Brunswick – saying that the facility has a “culture of fear.”

National CUPE rep Michael Davidson told CBC News on Feb. 26 that employees at the Centre were afraid to speak out on behalf of injured workers. “There’s a culture of fear in there, that you’ll lose your job if you speak out against the organization, or if you’re critical of the organization, or if you talk about changes that need to be made,” he told the CBC.

There were also safety concerns at the Centre, Davidson added, citing a recent incident in which local police had arrested a man there for possessing a weapon and issuing threats to staff at the facility. There had been no investigation of the incident since its occurrence, he said.

Davidson said that he was basing these observations on talks with members of CUPE Local 946, a branch of the national union representing employees of both the rehab centre and the main WorkSafeNB office in Saint John.

Davidson did not respond to COHSN by press time. But WorkSafeNB president and CEO Gerard Adams said that the organization did not support Davidson’s claims. “Nor do we believe the majority of our employees support these allegations,” he added.

“A 2014 exit survey with clients at our rehabilitation centre indicated an overall satisfaction level of 86.4 per cent,” Adams continued. “In our 2014 staff-satisfaction survey, which is anonymous and administered by an external agency, staff engagement rated at 95 per cent, with 91 per cent of respondents saying they felt comfortable and safe at their workplace. Overall satisfaction − ‘I feel WorkSafeNB is a good place to work’ − was also at 91 per cent.”

Adams added that WorkSafeNB always sought feedback from all of its employees on all aspects of its business. “We count on their expertise and respect it. Their input results in continuous improvements to our benefits, programs and services.”

Davidson has not been the first party to cast a critical eye on the Rehabilitation Centre. A March 2014 report from the Support Team for Injured Workers and Families (STIWF), Collaborative Group Process Report, claimed that the facility had a poor reputation.

“It appears that there is a pervasive and quite negative perception of the Grand Bay rehabilitation centre itself, amongst many injured workers,” the report read. “Some injured workers even went to the extreme of comparing Grand Bay to Fort Knox and concentration camps… Some shared with us that they had suicidal thoughts as a result of their stay there.”

The report elaborated that some injured workers had found their treatments and exercises more hurtful than helpful to them. Workers who refused to undergo painful rehabilitation techniques were considered “uncooperative,” it said.

“We are proud of the work we do at WorkSafeNB on behalf of New Brunswick’s workforce,” Adams said. “We believe our staff are the very best at what they do, and we appreciate their commitment to making our province one of the safest in which to work in Canada.”

Collaborative Group Process Report is available online at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx78OOvnOn-RU1pmUjVoZ3RSdGM/edit.

Health & Safety, Health and Wellness

Provincial ministers campaigning to promote healthy eating at work

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ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – The government of Newfoundland and Labrador has teamed up with Dietitians of Newfoundland and Labrador to raise awareness of healthier eating habits on the job, in observance of March as Nutrition Month. This year’s theme, Eating 9-5!, intends to highlight common cravings and better choices for the five most challenging times in a typical employee’s workday: rushed mornings; meetings and events; lunch; midday slumps; and the commute home. “As an employer, the provincial government recognizes the importance of living a life that balances home and work,” Ross Wiseman, Minister of Finance and Minister Responsible for the Human Resource Secretariat, said in a March 2 press release. “A major component of that healthy balance is ensuring we eat nutritious foods throughout the day.” The provincial government has also published an e-pamphlet, Putting Health on the Agenda, suggesting healthier snack and beverage options for workplace meetings and other events.

Health and Wellness, Human Resources, productivity

Live-in caregivers unsung contributors to oilsands economy, report says

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Live-in caregivers in northern Alberta’s oilsands region help ease work-life stresses for families in the intensive environment, but do so at great personal and financial costs, a new study has suggested.

Led by University of Alberta sociologist Sara Dorow, the study, Live-in Caregivers in Fort McMurray: a Socioeconomic Footprint, found that live-in caregivers — foreign nationals living in Canadian homes and employed to provide child or adult care — faced many challenges, including unpaid overtime, underpayment and illegal or poor working conditions. The online survey involved interviews with 56 temporary foreign workers living and working in dwelling units in and around Fort McMurray under the federal Live-in Caregiver Program, as well as qualitative information from individual interviews and focus groups with caregivers conducted between 2008 and 2014. The study was estimated to have captured approximately 10 per cent of the local live-in caregiver program.

In particular, 20 per cent of the surveyed caregivers reported that they were not paid or only occasionally paid for overtime hours and worked an average of 10.4 overtime hours a week. Eighteen per cent reported receiving less than the Alberta prevailing gross hourly wage, and illegal or poor working conditions was the second most important reason cited for changing employers while working in Fort McMurray.

“Residents of Fort McMurray work the longest hours in the country, often on rotational shifts,” said Dorow, the report’s lead author and an associate professor of sociology at the University of Alberta. “Live-in caregivers help to make the oilsands work regime sustainable by absorbing some of its stresses. At the same time, they experience stresses of their own, including the uncertainties of both the oilsands economy and the foreign worker policies coming out of Ottawa.”

The study noted that residents of Fort McMurray work the longest hours in the country, with residents who work 50 hours or more a week accounting for 32 per cent of the population, compared to only 17 per cent at the national level. On a weekly basis, live-in caregivers work 53.7 hours on average and tend to work even longer when one or both of their employers works at the site.

“Long and variable working hours combine with high mobility and turnover to contribute to both social opportunities and social stresses, including shortages of time for volunteering, leisure, family and daily care activities,” the study said. “Live-in caregivers in Fort McMurray have sacrificed substantial financial savings and long years without their own spouses and children to work for families in the oilsands region. The opportunity to immigrate is what keeps them going.”

Other findings include:

  • The majority of live-in caregivers (88 per cent) were female and from the Philippines;
  • Eighty-two per cent were between 25 and 44 years of age;
  • Seventy per cent of the sample surveyed each invested between $4,000 and $8,999 overall to move to work in Canada, while each of their employers likely spent about $3,000 (for Labour Market Impact Assessment processing fee and airfare); and
  • Live-in caregivers found cold weather, limited social activities, homesickness and cultural adjustment to be key challenges.

The summary of the survey is available online at http://www.onthemovepartnership.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Live-in-Caregivers-in-Fort-McMurray-Report-Overview-Dorow-et-al-Jan-2015.pdf. The full report is available at http://www.onthemovepartnership.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Live-in-Caregivers-in-Fort-McMurray-Dorow-et-al.-January-2015.pdf.

Health & Safety, Health and Wellness, Human Resources

About 40 per cent of workers wouldn’t disclose mental health problems: study

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Although nearly four in 10 workers wouldn’t tell their managers if they had mental health problems, half said that if they knew about a co-worker’s illness, they would want to help, a new survey by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has found.

The survey, “Worker attitudes towards mental health problems and disclosure,” was published recently in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Headed by Dr. Carolyn Dewa, senior scientist with CAMH in Toronto, the study revealed that workers have both negative and supportive attitudes about mental health in the workplace.

Dr. Dewa said that the survey had asked 2,219 working adults in Ontario: “Would you inform your manager if you had a mental health problem? And, if a colleague had a mental health problem, would you be concerned about how work would be affected?”

Among the 38 per cent who would not tell their manager, more than half were afraid that it would affect their careers, the study found. Other reasons for not disclosing included the bad experiences of others who came forward, fear of losing friends or a combination of those reasons.

The survey also found that three in 10 people wouldn’t tell because it wouldn’t affect their work. A total of 64 per cent said that they would be concerned if a worker had a mental illness, and one in five also worried about making the mental health problem worse.

According to a statement from CAMH, a positive relationship with their manager was the key reason given by those who would reveal that they had a mental health problem. Supportive organizational policies were cited by half of those who would disclose as another factor influencing their decision.

Dr. Dewa said that her past research had shown that workers with depression who received treatment were more productive than those who didn’t. Without disclosing, it might be difficult to get treatment, as work absences for counselling sessions or appointments need to be accounted for, she noted. “Stigma is a barrier to people seeking help,” Dr. Dewa said. “Yet by getting treatment, it would benefit the worker and the workplace, and minimize productivity loss.”

For organizations that want to address the stigma surrounding mental illness, Dr. Dewa recommended a number of elements to be in place, including policies and procedures, as well as facilitating positive relationships between managers and co-workers.

Statistics from CAMH show that in any given year, about one in five Canadians experiences a mental health or addiction problem.

Health and Wellness

Conference Board hosting webinar on physical activity

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The Conference Board of Canada (CBC) will be hosting a live webinar that will explore the importance of physical activity in the workplace. How to Adopt and Maintain Physical Activity in the Workplace will be held on Feb. 9 at 2 p.m. EST, the CBC said in a press release. The webinar will feature Dr. Ryan Rhodes from the University of Victoria’s Behavioural Medicine Lab. The 60-minute session will overview the benefits of regular physical activity from personal health, workplace wellness and economic perspectives and what organizations can do to promote these programs among their employees. For more information, visit http://goo.gl/ylFCpf.

Health and Wellness, productivity

Engagement, leadership identified as significant challenges in 2015

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Morneau Shepell, Canada’s largest administrator of retirement and benefits plans and the country’s largest provider of integrated absence management solutions, has identified employee engagement and leadership as the most significant challenges to workforce productivity in 2015.

Morneau Shepell’s 60-Second Survey for December was completed by 442 Canadian human resources professionals. It found that 43 per cent of respondents cited employee engagement as the major impediment to higher productivity and about one in five (22 per cent) named leadership as a significant challenge to productivity.

Nathan Gibson, manager of corporate communications with Morneau Shepell, told COHSN that the survey did not provide a specific definition of employee engagement or leadership, as those were left to the interpretation of the respondent. “The challenge that employers face is in knowing how to address these issues effectively in order to increase productivity,” added Stephen Lintrap, executive vice-president with Morneau Shepell, in a press release on Jan. 5.

According to Gibson, the survey also found that mental health was rated “significantly more often than physical health as a challenge to workplace productivity and as a priority for 2015.” In addition, the best indicator of an organization’s 2015 priority was 2014’s biggest challenge. For example, if the organization indicated that engagement was a major challenge, the majority of those respondents identified engagement as their 2015 priority. “In other words, organizational decision makers are focusing their attention on the issues that challenge them the most,” Gibson said.

Lintrap said that the key to maximizing employee engagement and productivity was to start with a solid foundation. “Ensuring that your workplace is healthy before embarking on other initiatives to drive engagement and increase productivity is essential,” he said in the release. “Otherwise, you run the risk of having employees who are highly productive for a while, but eventually burn out. This leads to job dissatisfaction, increased turnover and disability.”

He also noted the importance of mental health in the workplace, noting that almost five times as many survey respondents planned to focus on workplace mental health over physical health in 2015. “Employees aren’t going to be interested in helping the organization achieve goals if they’re too stressed or depressed to come to work,” he said.

Lintrap recommended that organizations reduce the stigma of mental illness by building awareness and educating leaders, managers and co-workers around mental health triggers and treatment. Second, they should ensure that support services, such as employee and family assistance programs that integrate with other benefit plans, are in place to help employees with personal and professional stress, as well as mental health conditions. “Once you have a healthy workplace, then you’ve created the foundation necessary for higher employee engagement and increased productivity,” he said.