01-34 GENERALS SPRING25 PT - Flipbook - Page 18
HEALTH & SAFETY
“We’ve got people who have worked
in the industry for more than 20 years.
The legislation has changed in that time.
However, they continue to operate in the
same way they did 20 years ago because
that’s how they were taught or feel
comfortable,” McKenzie says. “Or they
don’t feel they need to make the change.”
Those who perform the same work
in di昀昀erent locations are also an at-risk
group. They may assume that the hazards
are the same in each environment, rather
than assessing the unique hazards of each
jobsite.
Understanding the impact
Identifying the causes
Many factors can contribute to
complacency, including:
LACK OF SUPERVISION: Without appropriate
oversight, workers may feel less
accountable for following health and
safety policies and procedures.
INSUFFICIENT TRAINING: Workers whose
training is inadequate or outdated may
not know enough to identify hazards and
determine the safest way of completing
a task.
18 the generals • SPRING 2025
TAKING ACTION
“Employers need to take complacency as
seriously as they would take a physical hazard
that they can see,” McKenzie says. “We can’t
see complacency, but we know it’s there. We
need to implement measures and controls to
combat it.”
Preventing complacency on jobsites requires
considering factors such as:
LEADERSHIP COMMITMENT: Senior management sets
the tone for how the entire workplace treats
health and safety. Talk about expectations,
establish procedures for regular safety audits
and inspections, and discuss the risks of
complacency.
TRAINING AND EDUCATION: Workers should be trained
and educated to perform their tasks safely,
address hazards, and understand the risks of
the work.
COMMUNICATION: Put in place systems that enable
workers to feel comfortable about sharing
health and safety concerns with supervisors
FAMILIARITY AND ROUTINE: Workers who
complete the same task every day may
underestimate the associated risks
because they have been able to do the
work without incident in the past.
CULTURE: At workplaces where talking
about health and safety is uncommon (or
even actively discouraged), workers who
and management. Leadership can also share
positive examples of workers contributing to
health and safety changes on their jobsites.
INCENTIVE PROGRAMS: Reward workers who
prioritize health and safety. This can motivate
everyone to be safety-minded.
FOCUS ON WELLNESS: Managers, supervisors, and
workers should make a point of checking in with
themselves and each other. For a self check-in,
ask: Am I in a good place? Is there anything
I need to do to make myself more aware of
the job and the hazards? Checking in with a
co-worker can be as simple as asking them how
they’re doing. The risk of complacency is higher
when a worker is not in the right frame of mind
to focus on the task.
“Everybody on the jobsite needs to be
present. We need to see each other. We need to
identify when somebody is having an off day,
doesn’t understand, or needs more training,”
McKenzie says.
are employed by di昀昀erent subcontractors
or involved in di昀昀erent trades may not
feel responsible for each other. As a
result, they may be less likely to share
knowledge about hazards.
PRESSURE: Tight project timelines can lead
workers to deprioritize health and safety
in order to complete the task quickly.
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While complacency is hard to see and
measure, recent coroner’s inquests have
issued verdicts and recommendations
identifying complacency as a contributing
factor to worker fatalities in Ontario’s
construction industry.
“People who are generally very safetyminded have been fatally or critically
injured because something changed
in their work environment that day.
And they didn’t take that change into
account,” McKenzie says.
In one case, a worker donned their
harness and began to work without doing
a hazard assessment. Although they
prepared for work in the same way that
they usually did, changes to the work area
had created new, unaddressed hazards.
These hazards led to an incident that
resulted in the worker’s death.
Traumatic incidents can have an
impact on workers for life, whether they
were directly involved in the incident,
witnessed what happened, or simply
knew the person or people involved.
In fact, the entire workplace is often
negatively a昀昀ected. Workplace incidents
can lower productivity and quality
of work, strain workplace culture,
damage the reputation of the impacted
constructor or subcontractor, and
cause that company’s WSIB insurance
premiums to increase.
