Month: May 2023

ICBA’s Chris Gardner and Mike Martens are in today’s Journal of Commerce talking about the work of ICBA Wellness and our Wellness Ambassador, Corey Hirsch. From the piece:

ICBA started a new mental wellness program several years ago with a very clear focus, said ICBA BC President Chris Gardner.

“Make it easy for people to start a conversation about mental health. Remove the stigma, the awkwardness and the embarrassment,” Gardner said.

“Because we have a wave of mental health challenges that are overwhelming our entire economy. We can see it in our homes, on our streets, in our businesses.

“We’ve got to start having those conversations.”

Read the full article HERE.

Each week, ICBA’s Jordan Bateman reflects on what we’ve learned as we participate in ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program. ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program is helping more than 90 companies and nearly 10,000 construction professionals better understand mental health. This program is free for all ICBA members – check out icba.ca/wellness for details.

Ventana Construction has won ICBA’s prestigious Gord Stewart Health and Safety Innovation Award for their amazing stretching program. The program, which was developed and implemented across all Ventana job sites, aims to reduce musculoskeletal injuries (MSIs) by providing workers with information and guidance on best practices for stretching.

MSIs represent roughly 35% of claimed injuries in British Columbia’s construction industry, making them a significant concern for workers and employers alike. To combat this issue, Ventana has implemented a stretching program that not only helps reduce the risk of MSIs but also promotes overall health and wellness for workers.

The stretching program is a full-cycle program that uses technological innovation. It includes a poster with multiple QR codes that enable access to ‘how-to’ videos on best practices for stretching. These videos are available to all workers on the job site, including subtrades, and can be accessed from any mobile device. The program access is also uploaded into the safety app so it’s accessible to all employees at all times.

The stretching program is part of the morning pre-job tasks to start the workday. Supervisors ensure that each morning, prior to commencing work, the team holds a morning meeting outlining tasks, priorities, and pertinent safety-related items. This is followed by a 10-minute stretching routine outlined in the Stretch & Flex poster. Workers are also required to complete their Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) before starting work.

The benefits of stretching programs are many. They help reduce injuries, increase awareness of body positioning and conditioning, improve communication and team building, and make workers more alert when they go out into the field. Select stretches can be done during the workday to help alleviate tightness.

The Gord Stewart Award is given out annually by the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association (ICBA) to recognize excellence in construction workplace health and safety in British Columbia. Ventana receives a trophy and $5,000 cash prize, partially funded by WorkSafeBC.

Ventana Construction’s stretching program is an innovative and effective way to promote workplace health and safety. By utilizing technology and making the program accessible to all workers on the job site, Ventana has taken a significant step in reducing the risk of MSIs and promoting overall health and wellness for workers. ICBA is proud to recognize Ventana’s achievements and hopes that other construction companies will follow their example and prioritize workplace health and safety.

ICBA Alberta has released an election edition of the Alberta Construction Monitor, taking the personalities and politics out of the campaign, and focusing tightly on the two parties’ records in managing the provincial economy, and encouraging fairness, openness and prosperity in the construction and energy sectors.

The right to a secret ballot in union votes, fairness for every company to bid on taxpayer-funded construction projects, cutting red tape, and growing the economy, are four of the metrics the Monitor examines.

To read the election edition of the Alberta Construction Monitor, click HERE.

As a shareholder of the Green Bay Packers Inc., I was excited to see the Packers sign free agent safety Jonathan Owens last week.

It was a big week for Owens, who got married three days before signing the contract, to U.S. gymnastics legend, seven-time Olympic medalist, and mental health advocate Simone Biles.

Biles has been very outspoken about her own mental health and the need for people to talk more openly about the issues they face. “We’re not just entertainment, we’re humans and there are things going on behind the scenes that we’re also trying to juggle,” she said after the Tokyo Olympics. “Mental health, I think it should be talked about a lot, especially with athletes because I know some of us are going through the same things and we are always told to push through it but we’re all a little bit older now, we could kind of speak for ourselves.”

You wouldn’t think a 4’8 Olympic gymnast would share much in common with the close to half million construction professionals working in Alberta and BC today – but she does. As we have learned from ICBA Wellness ambassador Corey Hirsch, sports and construction are fields where people have long been encouraged to suffer silently, due to the stigma around mental health.

Biles, Hirsch and ICBA aim to break that attitude – and we’re working on it, one construction site at a time.

Each week, ICBA’s Jordan Bateman reflects on what we’ve learned as we participate in ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program. ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program is helping more than 100 companies and more than 10,000 construction professionals better understand mental health. This program is free for all ICBA members – check out icba.ca/wellness for details.

An emerging trend in management/leadership is the idea that the first five years of a person’s career hold incredible impact. And the younger the worker, the more this is true.

Add in the pandemic’s adverse and long-reaching effect on young people’s mental health, and it’s key that leaders find ways to connect with their young hours early and often.

In a recent study that found 40% of Canadian workers aged 18 to 24 are at a mental health “breaking point,” several suggestions were made, including this one:

“Resilience training should start at the very beginning of an employee’s tenure, since research shows that work habits become engrained in the first five years of one’s career. One of the most powerful ways to share learning is through storytelling—and creating opportunities for leaders and managers to share moments where they struggled and how they worked through those challenges. High-performing organizations will also invest in self-directed resources that employees can turn to at their own pace and schedule. These can include mindfulness apps, physical spaces where employees can disconnect from work, health classes and activity-based programs.”

This would be a significant shift for a lot of leaders, but the investment is worth it in a labour shortage where every advantage counts in recruiting and retaining workers.

Each week, ICBA’s Jordan Bateman reflects on what we’ve learned as we participate in ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program. ICBA’s Workplace Wellness Program is helping more than 100 companies and more than 10,000 construction professionals better understand mental health. This program is free for all ICBA members – check out icba.ca/wellness for details.