OHS departments and organizational structure

[rduncan]

Good afternoon everyone,

I’ve been reading some of the discussions with interest, but this is my first time posting on the site.

I am hoping that some of the participants on this discussion board would be willing to provide some information to assist me with a project I’m working on.

I’m currently employed as a health & safety professional in a fairly large (8000+ employees) organization with locations across Canada. I am drafting a proposal in the hope of making a business case for increasing the size of my department, and I’m looking for examples of the “health & safety structure” in place in other organizations with similar size and geographical distribution characteristics (such as retail organizations, perhaps).

I would very much appreciate any information anyone can provide in terms of the size and structure of other health & safety departments they’re familiar with, in order to allow me to make some comparisons in my proposal to my employer.

Any assistance would be much appreciated!

Best regards,
Rob

[Owen]

Hi Rob

It will depend on many things. You have to look at the hazards you have, how many workplace committees/representatives you may have, how large of a program you already have in place/need to develop. I work for a federal Agency and we have OHS personel in different operational areas and across the country (we are over 7k employees and have around 20 advisors/coordinators that report to different senior managers).

Owen

[rduncan]

Hi Owen,

Thanks so much for the reply - that's very helpful. Right now I'm solely responsible for the program, and with several hundred locations spanning 8 provinces it makes certain aspects of my role quite challenging (needless to say, I suppose, haha). As part of making the case for a larger department, I've been asked to provide comparisons with other organizations to show "how other companies do it". I'm hoping to be able to use feedback from this forum to demonstrate the need for a larger team, particularly with respect to compliance monitoring.

Thanks again,
Rob