On July 1 2014, the province of Ontario introduced a mandatory awareness training program. The aim of this province-wide intervention is to increase worker and supervisor knowledge of basic occupational health and safety (OH&S) rights and responsibilities under the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act. This increased knowledge among workplace parties will in turn improve the effectiveness of workplace level policies and procedures to prevent workplace incidents and injuries. The regulation introduced along with the mandatory awareness training intervention requires employers to provide and document that their employees have received a minimum level of training on a variety of topics. The introduction of mandatory awareness training was designed to improve the OH&S of Ontario’s most vulnerable workers. It also represents a large public investment in OH&S by the province. It is therefore important to evaluate the impact of this program using rigorous methods and relevant measures, as the findings of such an evaluation will provide unique information that can be used to support or modify existing and future primary prevention efforts. The aim of this research study is to evaluate the impacts that the introduction of mandatory awareness training has had on worker level of OH&S vulnerability.
•To measure four dimensions of the work context that are thought to place workers at a higher risk of work injury in a sample of workers in Ontario and BC prior to the introduction of mandatory awareness training.
•To examine changes in these dimensions after the introduction of mandatory awareness training in Ontario to changes occurring in British Columbia, where no similar program is taking place
•To examine if changes in Ontario at the population level are similar within labour market sub-groups (e.g. age, workplace size) and if there are implications on inequalities in work-injury risk in Ontario workers.
This project is relevant to multiple stakeholder groups involved with primary prevention activities. These include policy makers, workplaces, organised labour and workers.