Building capacity for productive and sustainable work
The Canadian Institute for Safety, Wellness & Performance (CISWP) is committed to building productive and sustainable workplaces through a collaborative and transdisciplinary approach. CISWP’s goal is to position Canada as a global leader in empowering business to adapt and thrive in a competitive economy and aims to improve the safety, wellness, and performance of the Canadian workforce through knowledge generation, research transfer, and workforce development. Working closely with stakeholders, the institute strives to conduct cutting-edge research and develop evidence-informed products, tools, and services to advance their capacity and address knowledge gaps.
Our mission
To improve the safety, wellness, and performance of the Canadian labour force by generating knowledge, transferring research to practice, and strengthening workforce development – all in collaboration with stakeholders.
Our vision
Position Canada as a global leader in empowering businesses to adapt and thrive in the ever-changing competitive economy.
Our values
Innovation
Conducting cutting-edge trans-disciplinary research to address knowledge gaps and develop evidence-informed products, tools, and services to advance stakeholders’ capacity.
Equity and inclusiveness
Empowering and enabling communities to support the labour force in striving for meaningful and fulfilling employment.
Collaboration
Engaging and working with employers, not-for-profits, labour unions, academics, service providers, policy makers, and practitioners to develop, promote, and implement effective and sustainable solutions.
Strategic objectives (2019-2025)
The Canadian Institute for Safety, Wellness & Performance:
- Conducts innovative transdisciplinary research that addresses knowledge gaps and priorities;
- Develops evidence-informed products, guidelines, resources, and technologies;
- Contributes to the development of Canadian and international standards;
- Develops and implements strategies for uptake of evidence informed practices by organizations across all sectors of the
economy; - Provides state-of-the-art education and training for the next generation of business leaders and practitioners; and
- Provides national and international leadership in the prevention and management of occupational injuries and
disabilities.
CISWP research programs
CISWP adopts a transdisciplinary and collaborative approach to build capacity for productive and sustainable work. Our research program is organized into seven overarching and overlapping research themes:
Musculoskeletal health
CISWP collaborates with stakeholders including employers, workers, not-for-profits, labour/unions, academics, service providers, policy makers and practitioners to reduce the risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD). MSD are injuries that affect muscles, ligaments, tendons and nerves caused by exposure to known ergonomic hazards including forceful exertions, repetitive motion, awkward posture and vibration.
MSD in the form of sprains and strains is the leading cause of lost-time injuries. CISWP's research aims to reduce the burden of MSD by:
- Understanding the aetiology and pathophysiological mechanisms of MSD.
- Developing effective exposure measurement and risk assessment tools and improving surveillance systems.
- Investigating exposure-response relationships including both physical and psychosocial factors on musculoskeletal health.
- Developing and evaluating interventions and risk mitigation strategies to prevent MSD among all business sizes and industry sectors.
Mental health and wellness
Mental health is a state of well-being, where the individual can manage the normal stresses of life, work productively and fruitfully, and reach her/his potential. Effective workplace strategies for mental health and wellness are critical for productive and sustainable work, and for the prevention and management of mental illness.
Each year, mental illness directly and indirectly costs the Canadian economy billions of dollars due to costs related to health and service care, presenteeism, absenteeism, and labor force exit.
CISWP collaborates with stakeholders to:
- Understand the social and cultural work environments across industries.
- Develop workplace strategies for the prevention, early detection, intervention, and management of mental illness, and promote workers' well-being.
Organizational management systems
Organizations are required to implement strategies to effectively prevent workplace injuries and provide safe workspace. If these activities are performed within an organizational-level framework, it may be considered a management system. Integrating health, safety, and workplace injury prevention activities into organizations’ overall management systems, would result in better recognition of health and safety issues by stakeholders within organizations, enhance organization success and overall organizational performance.
CISWP collaborates with stakeholders in conducting cutting-edge research and developing evidence-informed practices to integrate health and safety, and injury and disability prevention into organizational management systems.
Our research also focuses on:
- Developing innovative strategies to measure organizational success by defining the relationships and metrics of productivity, performance, quality, and sustainability.
- Identifying and minimizing organizational barriers to success for productive and sustainable work.
- Constructing and refining macro-ergonomic theories to optimize organizational excellence.
Disability and employment
CISWP’s goal is to identify and evaluate technologies, equipment, products, tools, and services that promote the inclusion of people with disabilities across different sectors and occupations.
CISWP works with partners to conduct applied research on:
- Improving job accessibility for people with disabilities through inclusive design of workplaces, tools, and tasks.
- Identifying barriers for equity, diversity, and inclusion of people with disabilities by understanding their needs, perspectives, and lived experiences.
- Understanding the challenges faced by people with disabilities from training to employment and through their employment life cycle.
- Creating evidence-informed solutions to remove barriers for employment of people with disabilities and effectively disseminating toolbox of solutions to businesses.
Building the workforce for tomorrow
As the nature of work continues to evolve due to progress in technology, innovation in Robotics, AI technologies and smart tools, employment sector will continue to be fluid as a significant portion of work shifts online, making the new form of employment borderless. Concurrently, the Canadian workforce is aging and becoming more diverse in terms of cultural/ethnic origin, abilities, and skill sets.
CISWP conducts research to explore how Canadian employers can best adapt to these changing conditions while ensuring an inclusive, productive, and sustainable workforce.
Our research focuses on:
- Addressing the needs of micro and small businesses in preventing workplace injuries and enhancing performance and productivity.
- Addressing broader issues including precarious work, and flexible work by identifying evidence-informed and effective practices. We aim to understand the generalizability, sustainability, and scalability of practices to implement into different contexts, occupations, and sectors.
- Conducting collaborative research to develop and evaluate multi-stakeholder strategies to capitalize on the skills, expertise, and knowledge of the ageing workforce, and support a healthy work-to-retirement transition.
Designing work, products and environments
Universal design is a concept of designing and promoting products, communications, and environments to accommodate human diversity; this includes a broad spectrum of abilities regardless of age, gender, ability, or life status. CISWP is committed to advocate and implement strategies and solutions consistent with universal design. We adopt a user-centered design approach where we focus on the needs of the user throughout the iterative product life cycle.
Our research focuses on:
- Constructing physical anthropometric databases across different sectors.
- Examining cross-national relationships.
- Developing design standards and guidelines.
- Conducting iterative usability evaluations to improve product and work environments.
Knowledge transfer and exchange
Knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE) is vital for applying research knowledge into practice and decision-making. With immense resources invested into research, the knowledge generated should be readily accessible, available, and applicable to knowledge users to use in practice, planning and policymaking.
Through ongoing collaboration with stakeholders in all stages of our applied research, including conceptualization, development, execution, and reporting, our KTE strategies fulfill the identified needs of knowledge users.
Our research focuses on:
- Co-Creation of (general and industry-specific) evidence-informed standards, guidelines, practices, tools, products, and technologies.
- Integration of research knowledge into education programs.
Funders
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)
One of the three Tri-Council agencies, along with NSERC and SSHRC. Federal funding agency responsible for funding health and medical research in Canada. CIHR has a variety of funding programs to fund research collaborations between post-secondary institutions and partners to support the discoveries and innovations that improve our health and strengthen our health care system. CIHR typically does not have college-specific programs.
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
One of the three Tri-Council agencies, along with CIHR and SSHRC. Federal funding for post-secondary based research and student training in the areas of natural sciences and engineering. Funding available specifically for colleges are administered through the College and Community Innovation (CCI) Program.
The objective of the CCI Program is to increase innovation at the community and/or regional level by enabling Canadian colleges to increase their capacity to work with local companies, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The CCI Program is administered by NSERC but is funded by all three Tri-Council Agencies (NSERC, SSHRC, CIHR).
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
One of the Tr-Council agencies, along with CIHR and NSERC. Federal funding agency that promotes and supports post-secondary research and training in the humanities and social sciences through a variety of funding programs. SSHRC does not have college-specific programs, and faculty course releases are not an eligible expense.
Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI)
A Federal non-profit corporation that provides funding towards research infrastructure at Canadian post-secondary institutions. A variety of programs help fund up to 40% of research infrastructure and equipment costs at post-secondary institutions. Add ORF verbiage. Annual college specific (College Fund) program has been initiated in 2022
Defence Research and Development Canada
Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) is Canada's science, technology and innovation leader, trusted advisor, collaborative partner, and knowledge integrator for defence and security. We develop and deliver new technical solutions and advice to the Department of National Defence, the Canadian Armed Forces, other federal departments, and the safety and security communities. We also work with partners in academia, government and industry and with Canada’s allies.
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