Effectiveness of workplace health and safety programs in university settings

Abstract

A study was conducted among the faculty members, staff, graduate students and researchers of Memorial University (MUN) through well-designed surveys to evaluate the effectiveness of the health and safety programs provided by the Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Unit at MUN. To establish a benchmark and to understand Memorial’s environmental health and safety programs relative to other institutions, we have reviewed the health and safety programs of ten universities across Canada and performed a comparative study with Memorial’s safety programs based on the publicly available information on university webpage. We have conducted two identical online surveys of MUN employees and graduate students on their knowledge, attitude, and behavior regarding health and safety in October, 2016, and in April, 2017. A quantitative analysis was done to understand the health and safety awareness with reference to different demographic factors and the effect of the dissemination of the health and safety information on knowledge, attitude, and behavior of employees and graduate students. Our survey results were compared with the result of a previous survey, conducted in 2013 on safety culture of Memorial University. The surveys were followed by Key Informant Interviews (KII) of eight officials of Memorial University to understand the causes of some of the findings from the surveys and get the views of the university administration on some of the comments made by the survey respondents. Overall, the survey results show that Memorial University has progressed significantly in communication and in the use of online tools to manage the environment, health, and safety. Also, Memorial has a good health and safety policy in place, and the health and safety program is at par with other Canadian universities.