There are a number of critical factors that support occupational health and safety in today’s work environments. In Ontario, these circumstances require ongoing evaluation, and necessitate an understanding of the factors and limitations that are influential in promoting occupational health and safety across organizations. Occupational health and safety is such a critical component of all businesses that it requires various measures in order to promote health and well being for all persons. As a means of determining whether or not a program is achieving its desired objectives, it is necessary to develop various measures that will evaluate these programs and will identify various strengths and weaknesses, including statistics and methods. Therefore, the following discussion will address two primary measures that might be useful in determining the level of success of occupational health and safety in Ontario.

Measuring the overall ability of occupational health and safety programs to achieve their desired outcomes is a key requirement to promote effectiveness. This is often measured by exploring what obstacles were evident in the past in order to promote future directives, utilizing surveys and past legal records to evaluate these challenges (CCOHS, 2010). In addition, utilizing statistics that are based upon number of injuries, as well as number of hazards in the workplace, known as the hazard burden, and managing the number of occupational and safety failures are a few of the options that are available to support this process (Health & Safety Executive, 2001). However, the measurement of these statistics and behaviors must also incorporate room for change when there are updates to systems or processes that may lead to different levels of risk in the workplace (Health & Safety Executive, 2001). Finally, examining how employees behave in response to occupational health and safety is another factor, one that requires an understanding of their roles and responsibilities, and how they are willing to accept these challenges in order to achieve the desired results (Health & Safety Executive, 2001). From a statistical perspective, it is necessary to consider methods that improve upon injury statistics and other factors that will encourage change and progress.

One measure that must be considered in evaluating health and safety in Ontario is the overall effectiveness of educational programs that provide training and guidance to employees and managers in organizations throughout Ontario. This is a critical opportunity in order to determine the overall effectiveness of the programs that are already in place. One concept to consider is that of an expert system, which is designed to improve knowledge in regards to occupational health and safety for all persons (Bomel Ltd., 2006).  In one context, “The Government of Ontario and its workplace partners are committed to eliminating all workplace injuries. Workers have a right to come home each day to their families, safe and sound” (Ontario Ministry of Labour, 2010). Therefore, measuring progress must be comprehensive and continuous, with the recommendation that survey instruments and safety records be utilized in order to measure success at different rates.

There are electronic training tools that may be effective in supporting health and safety, and that reflect an understanding of the challenges and expectations of providing adequate health and safety measures in workplace environments, such as the E-Learning Portal (PSHSA, 2010). Therefore, a measurement of effectiveness with respect to education would be to determine how an organization is succeeding in supporting long-term educational objectives in utilizing some of these resources on a consistent basis. This would be measured through training quizzes that would require each employee to login to the system, take these quizzes, and receive a passing score.