Resources Available to Help Keep Students Safe on Take Our Kids to Work Day

HAMILTON, ON (October 21, 2014) –  On November 5, 2014, grade nine students across Canada will visit the workplace of a parent, relative or friend as part of the National program, Take Our Kids to Work™ day. The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) reminds all organizations involved to make safety a priority on this day and to take extra care to protect the visiting students from any hazards that may be present in the workplace.

Take Our Kids to Work™ day allows organizations to demonstrate their commitment to the education of young people as the workforce of the future, and highlight the range of jobs within the organization. In preparation for Take Our Kids to Work™ day, CCOHS recommends employers:

Conduct an inspection of the work area prior to the day.

• On the day, hold a workplace orientation with the students that focus on health and safety issues relevant to that environment.
• Supervise students all day while they are at the workplace site.
• Students should only be allowed to undertake tasks and experiences for which they have been properly oriented.
• In the work environment, students should be encouraged to speak up about health and safety concerns, ask questions, and comment on situations they observed during the day.

Free workplace health and safety resources are available for free on the CCOHS website to help workplaces promote safety to students and young workers alike.

The free webinar, Help Your New Workers Stay Safe covers the overall training needs of a new worker, and details how to incorporate a best practice approach for reaching young, new or migrant workers, and how to acknowledge the differences between these groups.

The New Worker Orientation Checklist offers workplaces a guide on how to provide training to workers.

The Young Workers Zone is a website dedicated to providing free and easy access to a comprehensive collection of credible resources in Canada for keeping kids safe on the job.

More information and resources relating to young workers can be found on the CCOHS website.

More information about the Take Our Kids to Work™ program can be found on The Learning Partnership website.

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For Further Information, Contact: 

Jennifer Howse, Communications Officer Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) (905) 572-2981, Ext. 4241 E-mail: jennifer.howse@ccohs.ca www.ccohs.ca

About CCOHS The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS), a Canadian federal government agency based in Hamilton, Ontario is Canada’s national resource for the advancement of workplace health and safety. CCOHS promotes the total well-being – physical, psychosocial and mental health – of working Canadians by providing information, training, education, management systems and solutions that support health and safety programs and the prevention of injury and illness. CCOHS partners and collaborates with agencies and organizations from Canada and around the world to improve the quality and quantity of resources and programs, as well as expand the breadth of usage of occupational health information to many different segments of society.