Northern Alberta Institute of Technology
PA-12: Workplace Health and Safety

Health and Safety Services Initiatives: o Healthy Eating Program offered to NAIT Staff and Students o Tobacco Reduction and Cessation Program offered to NAIT Staff and Students o Mental Health First Aid – Health and Safety Services provides training to NAIT Staff o Preventable Injuries Campaign in conjunction with the Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research(Fall of 2014) o Pet Therapy Dog - A trial program through HSS was initiated using a trained therapy dog to lessen the impacts of stress on staff and students. Flynn, a Labradoodle, is trained in this capacity. o NAIT’s Health and Safety Management Program(Toolkit) is available in an electronic format on Moodle. The toolkit engages all employees at NAIT with a common foundation for Health and Safety activities. The Moodle course validates that key Health and Safety content and requirements have been communicated via a short exam when each section is completed. o North American Occupational Safety and Health Week (NAOSH) – NAIT held an in-house symposium and round table discussion focusing on ‘Building the Health and Safety Culture at NAIT’ as defined in the institute’s long-term vision NAIT 2021. NAIT continues to plan similar initiatives during NAOSH week. Workers are engaged in monitoring and advising on health and safety programs by: o Health and Safety Strategic Plan was developed and exists in draft to initiate a direction for health and safety to support NAIT 2021. The committee was representative of various programs and departments across NAIT. o Health and Safety meetings – 14 committees representative of all NAIT Departments and Programs. o Near Miss/Hazard Notification Process whereby staff can report unsafe conditions. o Health and Safety Newsletter – staff can provide feedback and request topics of interest. o NAIT’s Joint Worksite Health and Safety Committee provides a venue for stakeholder review of procedures. Members of the JWHSC are representative of the 14 safety committees, the unions(NASA and AUPE), the students(NAITSA) and management. The committee provides feedback on experience with rolling out new procedures and success. o Through a direct HSS email staff and students have quick access to health and safety professionals to support the identification of emergent and discussion issues.