Inside the Changing World of Work with Anne Tennier - President & CEO, CCOHS

In our recent podcast interview, Perley Brewer, sits down with Anne Tennier, President & CEO of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS), to discuss the changing landscape of workplace health and safety in Canada.

The conversation highlighted CCOHS’s longstanding mandate to support the physical, mental, and psychosocial well-being of workers, and the wide range of resources the organization provides to workplaces across the country — from free fact sheets, podcasts, videos, and apps to more specialized tools and training.

Anne also shared insights on several key issues shaping the future of work, including:

• Mental health and psychological safety
• Artificial intelligence in the workplace
• The realities of a multi-generational workforce
• The need for practical, credible, and plain-language health and safety guidance

The interview also touched on Anne’s strong ties to New Brunswick, where she completed both of her degrees at UNB and worked earlier in her career.

The discussion also featured CCOHS’s upcoming Changing World of Work forum in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, which will bring together workplace health and safety leaders from across the country to explore emerging issues and innovative approaches.

It was an informative conversation on how organizations can stay responsive, thoughtful, and forward-looking in supporting workers across Canada.

#LinkedIn #WorkplaceSafety #OccupationalHealth #CCOHS #MentalHealth #PsychologicalSafety #FutureOfWork #Leadership #AI #WorkplaceWellbeing

Transcript

Perley Brewer   0:13
 Welcome to today's podcast. My name is Perley Brewer and I will be your host. Today's podcast guest is Anne Tenier from the Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety. Welcome, Anne.
Anne Tennier   0:25
 Hi, Perley. Great to be with you.
Perley Brewer   0:28
 So we were talking just before our podcast that you have some roots here in New Brunswick. For folks that haven't met Anne before, tell us about yourself.
Anne Tennier   0:36
 Sure. Born and brought up in northern Quebec, which, you know, that's where I started. I was speaking English and French from the time I remember that I could speak. So kind of fun to be bilingual almost from birth. However, my connection with New Brunswick
 runs pretty deep. I did both my degrees at UNB, first in chemistry, and then I worked for a few years, and then in chemical engineering. So I worked in St. John, New Brunswick for a small consulting firm. It was actually a lab at the time.
 And then after I graduated from my engineering degree, I worked for McCain Foods up in Florenceville, New Brunswick. So I know New Brunswick very well. I still have family that live there, so my roots run deep and it holds wonderful memories from the time that I lived there.
Perley Brewer   1:36
 So, how long have you been with the CCOHS?
Anne Tennier   1:39
 Gosh, I started in April of 2018. So it's coming on, well, I guess we just passed eight years, matter of fact. Yeah. And I have, it's a five-year term. I'm appointed by the federal government to serve as the president and CEO of CCOHS. And it's a five-year term. I'm on my second term now. So I have
Perley Brewer   1:47
 Thank you.
Anne Tennier   2:02
 Another couple of a little under two years to go for the second term.
Perley Brewer   2:07
 So for folks that haven't heard of the CCOHS, which again is a Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety, tell us about the mandate of your organization.
Anne Tennier   2:16
 Yeah, yeah, so we have, we are a departmental corporation. I'm not going to get into what that means, but we are a department of the federal government and we report to the Minister of Labor through, we report to Parliament, I should say, through the Minister of Labor.
 So that gives us a good connection to parliamentarians and so on so that they get to hear and understand what's going on within the world of occupational health and safety. We are located in Hamilton. We only have one location, but that's where all the magic happens and we put everything out so that
 that folks across the country and internationally, in fact, we do have a pretty strong international following, can have access to our resources. So we were founded in 1978, in fact, April 20th, 1978. So we're coming on to 48 years, a little over 48 years.
 been around. And it's quite interesting when you look at our mandate, it really, which was established in 1978, matter of fact, through our CCOHS Act, we have our own act. It stated at that time that our mission was to promote
 the total well-being, both well, including physical, psychosocial, and mental well-being of working Canadians. So when you think back almost 50 years, there weren't a lot of organizations that were talking about mental well-being, psychosocial aspects of work, and so on, but that was part of our mandate.
 right from the beginning. So how do we do that? Well, we provide a lot of resources, and we'll get into that in a little bit, but we call them very credible resources. We have a highly qualified group of technical specialists that research different topics, topics of interest, current topics.
 making sure that whatever we put in, we can stand behind and that the references that we use are from credible organizations. We also provide training and education to workers and workplaces across the country. And I say across the country, but I think I did mention we do have a fairly good international following as well.
Perley Brewer   4:40
 But...
 Mhm.
Anne Tennier   4:53
 And we try to provide systems and solutions to those nagging issues that the world of occupational health and safety presents itself. Now we are governed, our board of directors or Council of Governors as it's known, is actually a tripod.
 council. So we have spots for every single jurisdiction in Canada. So whether it's federal, provincial, territorial, we also have 4 employer representatives and four labor representatives. So that is very much a reflection of how we do our work.
 because anything that we put out in terms of fact sheets, in terms of courses, we want to have a tripartite review before it goes out so that it is a balanced product that people have access to.
Perley Brewer   5:48
 So what kinds of products and services do you offer?
Anne Tennier   5:52
 Oh my goodness. So you might have to stop me a little, you know, at some point in time, because I could go on for a while. But let's start out with what's available as a public service. And what do I mean by that? That means that it's available to anyone who has access to our website.
 And I will mention our website, ccohs.ca, and everything we produce is available in English. And so all of our resources that are available for free are available on our website. Our website is
 truly the gateway of everything that we have to offer. So what does that look like? So we've talked about one of the hallmarks of what we offer to workplaces and workers in Canada is our Safety Info Line service. So that is a free.
 bilingual, confidential way for anyone in Canada to ask questions that they have about occupational health and safety or workplace health and safety, and they will get an answer that is specific to their question. We'll do the research for them and we'll feed it back to the person who
 inquired on that question. So we actually colloquially call it our inquiry service, but it's formally called Safety Info Line. So you can write to us, you can email us, you can phone us, and you can fax us. Any way, any one of those methods will reach our technical specialists and they'll
 provide a response. Typically, the responses come within 24 to 48 hours. If it's something that's a little bit more complex, it might take up to a week. But we do maintain communication with the inquirer just to let them know when they can expect a response.
 Now, as a complementary product to that, we have our Osh Answers fact sheets. And those are a collection of, gosh, I think we're well over 700 topics for which we maintain fact sheets. And they're regularly reviewed, so we're trying to keep them
 current within about three to four years. Last year we reviewed 120 of them to make sure that they were current. And every year we produce a new one, you know, new ones. It could be, I think last year there was something like about 15 or 20 new fact sheets that were produced that reflect
 What's new in the world of health and safety? What's on people's minds? So those are all readily available on our website, both in English, et en Francis, and folks can access them. It will give you the references where we found the information.
 And they're prepared in a nice question and answer type of framework. So on a particular topic, there might be a range of questions on that topic. We then also use a lot of that information to develop awareness level e-courses.
 All of our courses are available through our website. Pardon me.
 We don't actually do any classroom training anymore. We do everything that we have is online through virtual training. And awareness level courses are courses that generally introduce the topic. They tend to be a little more high level. They tend to be a little shorter, somewhere between 15 to 30 minutes. But if you just want to
 get a bit of an understanding, that's also a good way to learn about a particular topic. Then the other thing that we've done, all of the work that is available, pardon me, on our website, we've replicated through our Safe Work app. So we develop apps.
 that are available either through the Apple Play Store or through the Google Store for Android or for Apple. We're actually going more and more towards what's called a progressive web app, so it doesn't have to go through Google or Apple.
 it replicates what you see on a website, except that it's optimized for viewing on a device, a handheld device. So that Safe Work app, anybody can go on to either Android or Apple and look for that app. It's available for free, doesn't cost anything at all.
 And it is bilingual. And it replicates all 700 plus fact sheets, plus other tools and products that we have available. So that is really kind of the roundup of the free resources. We'll have also pages on our website that are focused on young workers, for example.
 or that are focused on new workers. So it could be new Canadians, it could be somebody who's new to the workforce, or somebody who's new to a particular industry. So you can get some very focused resources on those topics. We'll also offer a roundup of all of our mental health resources in one spot. If you go to the main page of our website,
 There's a button there that will say something like Mental Health Resources. You can click on that and that will be the gateway to all things mental health that we have. So we've tried to structure our website so that it is relatively intuitive. Mind you, we are going to do a bit of a refresh, but in the next year or so.
 but we do try to keep everything relatively easy to find and access. So we also have a great collection of podcasts like we're doing today. We have a collection of...
 of infographics, we have a collection of videos. So there's just, we're trying to reach workers and workplaces where they're at. Some people are really comfortable listening to podcasts. Some people are a little more visual. Some people like to actually look at something and take it all in and so on. So we've tried to use
 the multiplicity of tools that are available to enable workers to work safely. So that's on the public service or free resource side. If we now move to other products and services that we have on a cost recovery basis,
 Our newest product is our Business Safety Portal. That is a very affordable and easy to use online solution to help organizations protect workers and meet health and safety responsibilities.
 So it is a portal and it provides customized resources for industry and for the location where the industry is situated. So for example, if you had a small business and we're really trying to get to the small business community, if you had a small business in New Brunswick, they were interested
 to find out a little bit more about health and safety. They're not entirely sure where to start. They can come on to the Business Safety Portal. The first thing they'll be asked to go through is an onboarding questionnaire. What are the kinds of, where are you located? How many employees do you have? What kind of work?
 What do you do? What are the issues that you face? All of that sort of information will help curate and personalize their portal to what they need. So once you've gone through that process, very low cost, for example, if you had one to five employees,
 The cost to access the Business Safety Portal and all the resources that come with it would be $175. And that would give you access to fact sheets that are very specific to the information that you provided in your onboarding questionnaire. It will give you links to WorkSafe New Brunswick.
 to the ministry in New Brunswick as well. All of the, so that there's a ready access if they didn't know where to go, they can click right through. If you had health and safety associations within New Brunswick that are specific to that particular industry, it would give you a link to that.
 and it'll give you links directly to fact sheets that we have in our collection that are specific to the issues that you might have put in your onboarding questionnaire. We also include all kinds of templates and guides for identifying health and safety concerns, assessing risk,
 There's a template there where if you've never had a health and safety policy, you can walk through that template and prepare your own health and safety policy. You can put your own logo to it, you can save it, you can print it, you can post it in your workplace, etc. And then we also have a digital file cabinet.
 So you work for WorkSafe in New Brunswick for many years, Perley. So I know that, you know, whenever an inspector goes in, one of the things to a workplace, one of the things they want to see.
 are your records. And sometimes in a small business, it's held in personal email, it's held in a variety of places, and not always easy to put your fingers on. So we've created a digital file cabinet where that workplace through the administrator of...
 their particular portal, the businesses administrator that is, because we don't have visibility to the information that is specific to that business. They can actually go in and have everything that they need, your training records, your policies, your procedures, all of that stuff in one place.
 don't have to go looking, hunt and pecking as they say, and looking for it across various locations. So that's a business safety portal. That's the newest product launch. Then we get into, pardon me, a product that's called CanManage. And CanManage is actually a safety data sheet management system.
 It keeps an organization's safety data sheet collection, current, accessible, and complete, all in one location, and it's available 24-7.
 To complement, so we also make sure that we look for the latest version of the safety data sheet when we get the collection from the workplace, and it is a cost recovery product. Once we get their collection, we check their safety data sheets, make sure that they're the most current version that's available.
 And then we upload them into a database so that that database for their products becomes available 24-7 to the workplace and to the workers. That one, we also launched an app last year, the CanManage app. So if you're really comfortable looking at your safety data sheets on your device,
 Your handheld device, you can log in and you can get access to the Safety Data Sheets, and then, pardon me, new in 2025 was a CanManage Basic Solution, so we know that CanManage often can be a fairly overwhelming product.
 Because we asked you about how many locations do you have and so on, but many small businesses have one location and they have fewer than 50 safety dash sheets, so we launched a basic can manage basic solution, low cost, one price.
 Five $100 manages up to 500, or sorry, 50 safety data sheets for one location, but the same sort of access twenty-four 7 access through the app, et cetera.
 So, that's CanManage the Safety Data Sheet Management System. We then get into EnviroOsh, which is a legislative monitoring service, and it's a comprehensive listing of health, safety, and environmental legislation.
 across Canada, along with associated CSA standards. So that's a subscription-based product, and workplaces can buy a subscription for a year, two years, three years, and they can have access to all of the health and safety legislation in one place.
 So, and it goes all across the country. So you can select full country. If you're a large employer that has multiple locations, you might want to have all of the, all legislation and regulation across the country. Or you might just select Eastern Canada, Western Canada, and I think Ontario is, you have East, West and Ontario are the kind of the options that are available.
 So that's a handy tool. We know, of course, that health and safety legislation is all available in jurisdictional websites. What we do, though, is every month we put out a prompt for all of our subscribers that describes what are the changes in the legislation in the past month. So
 you know, the users of that, and oftentimes it'll be the health and safety coordinators, the health and safety managers. They can quickly, at a glance, see if there's anything that's changed in their jurisdiction in case they hadn't heard about it. So that's a handy service. Publications, we
 went back to both print and digital publications for a while during the pandemic. We kind of didn't do any print publications because it was challenging to get them out. But we've reinstated the both print and public, sorry, digital publications, and they cover a really wide
 range of topics from fundamentals to the health and safety program to specific occupations and emerging issues. So for example, we have put out a climate change handbook. So what are the workplace and worker implications of climate change? And that's a pretty comprehensive
 document available online as well as in print.
 We have e-courses that go into greater depth than the awareness level ones that I talked about earlier. Some of them are very specialized training. Some of them are developed for different jurisdictions. Some of them are developed in consultation with
 Public Health Agency of Canada, for example, or perhaps Health Canada. So those e-courses that are developed by federal government departments are often subsidized by them for the development, and then we make those available for free.
 But then we have, of course, I think we have the best WHMIS course in the country. That's one of the courses that we get many, many, many e-learners every year as they update their WHMIS knowledge.
 And then we can do some client projects as well. So I briefly mentioned some specialized training. We'll be engaged by specialized clients to do that, to develop training. So for example, one that comes to mind is wildland firefighting.
 That's a fact sheet that we developed, and there is likely going to be some associated training that goes along with that. We also develop apps, and in fact, New Brunswick was our first app client, so I'm trying to think, Perley, maybe you know, I think that app.
 was maybe launched in 2017 or so, 2016, 2017. It's gone through quite a number of updates. It's gone through a lot of additional topics and so on. So every single one of the Atlantic provinces now has an app.
Perley Brewer   23:05
 Mm.
Anne Tennier   23:18
 And we have other apps further west as well, and they basically bring forward all of the jurisdictional requirements, any special tools, and so on that that jurisdiction wants to include in the apps. So, for example, New Brunswick would have subsidized the development of the app.
 and it's now available for free to anyone who wants to use it. And then we'll do specialized fact sheet development. So we work closely with Public Health Agency of Canada to develop a variety of fact sheets. Of course, during the pandemic, we worked extremely closely with the Public Health Agency of Canada.
 they would produce wonderful, wonderful resources, but a little bit difficult to understand at the workplace level. So we would take that and plain language the resources so that workers and workplaces could understand what the guidance was for a particular
 A particular industry or issue, so...
 I mentioned plain language. We try our hardest to plain language everything that we put out. So that's something that even from a legislation perspective, trying to make legislation, which is often difficult to understand if you're not, you know, familiar with legislation or regulations,
 We try to apply a plain language lens to that so that it makes things come alive in a tangible way.
 I think that's pretty much everything that we do.
Perley Brewer   25:01
 So, how big a staff would you have?
Anne Tennier   25:03
 We are now a little over 100 folks. We have all of the different functions of any organization. So we have a large group of technical specialists, which they're the ones that create a lot of the content that is the backbone of all the services that we offer.
 We have an education services department, and they have really upped their game in the last few years to use adult learning principles in all of the e-learning courses that we put out there. We have a full digital services department. All of our apps, I mentioned apps a few times in our chat.
 All of our apps are developed in-house at CCOHS. We don't subcontract any of our digital or IT work. It's all done in-house. We have all of the different specialties. Our business safety portal was developed in-house and with a
 User interface specialists, making sure that what our vision was would come alive, and people would find it very easy and intuitive to use. Then, of course, we have our communications team, and I think you know some of the folks in our communications team. They are the ones who will put out...
 the podcasts, they'll put out posters, infographics, all founded on the strong technical work that we do from our technical services folks. They will run all of our social media campaigns, so we're very active on all of the social media channels, so anyone who wants to see us can
 Can see us on most likely see us on their favorite channel, including Instagram and Facebook, Twitter for now, considering that one, developing a presence in Blue Sky, and of course, LinkedIn is one of the big ways in which we can get our messages out.
 because it's a more professional and workplace-focused community.
 And then, of course, we have the supporting groups like human resources, we have a corporate governance group, and we have our finance team. So all in all, a little over 100 people all located in Hamilton at our office in Hamilton.
Perley Brewer   27:35
 Now you also have a conference coming up October 28th and 29th, St. John's, Newfoundland, called The Changing World of Work. Tell us about that conference.
Anne Tennier   27:39
 Cool.
 We do.
 It is, that's right. It's really exciting to be in St. John's. It's the first one that we've held in St. John's. So we're hoping that many of your listeners will find their way over to the rock, as they say, for a couple of days. And it really does focus on what are those new issues and what are those new
 ways of doing health and safety work that is so important to us. That's what we focus on. So we'll have two full days of speakers, keynote speakers, then speakers drawn from all across the country. Everybody's in one place. We prefer to have everyone in one
 room. We don't have breakout sessions and so on. We do have an innovation showcase so people can, workplaces or organizations can apply to be part of the innovation showcase. You've got a new product or a new resource that you want to highlight. That's open to jurisdictions. It's open to
 organizations who might want to demonstrate something. We have an innovation showcase where people during the break times can come and circulate and speak to folks that are there. Yeah, it's always well attended. Our last one was in Calgary in 2025. We got a little bit out of sync.
 during the pandemic, as we had, obviously we had to cancel one, so we're trying to get back into every two-year rotation. So the one in Calgary was about 18 months, or well, it was this time last year, so about 18 months before the St. John's Newfoundland one, and then the one after that will be two years later.
 But yeah, it's always very well attended. I think the, we sold out, gosh, I want to say about.
 in May. We were sold out by February for the last forum. So encourage everybody to sign up early and register early. There is an early bird special on. It's $100 cheaper if you sign up.
 Oh gosh, I should know this off the top of my head, but I want to say it's probably sign up before August and you'll be able to save $100 on the registration fee. So that's currently $825 for the two days along. That includes lunch for the two days. It includes a welcome reception.
Perley Brewer   30:09
 Mhm.
Anne Tennier   30:24
 and snacks in the morning and afternoon.
Perley Brewer   30:28
 Keynote speakers. Who are your keynote speakers?
Anne Tennier   30:31
 Ah, we haven't launched, we haven't put out the roster of speakers yet, so you'll have to check back in a couple of months when we do the launch.
Perley Brewer   30:43
 Very good. So for someone to register, which easiest way for someone to register for your conference?
Anne Tennier   30:44
 Yeah.
 Just go right to our website. Go right to our website at ccohs.ca and you'll see it prominently displayed on the homepage. We do have a few speakers. These aren't the keynote speakers, but we do have a few speakers that we've already identified. One will be Janet McCluskey.
Perley Brewer   30:49
 Okay.
Anne Tennier   31:06
 Kern from the Association of Workers' Compensation Boards of Canada, AWCBC. So that should be a really interesting talk on how to make statistics that a WHSCC gathers come alive and give you insight into what are those issues in workplaces across the country.
Perley Brewer   31:28
 So from your knowledge of dealing with workplaces across Canada, what are the hot issues right now? What are you getting a lot of questions on?
Anne Tennier   31:32
 Mhm.
 What are the hot issues? Yeah. You know, it's interesting. You would think that we've all been working on health and safety for a long time, but we continue to see some of the basics
 that keep coming up through our inquiry service. I mentioned our inquiry service a little while ago. We get close to 8,000 different questions that come in every year in which we put back a response. And we monitor what are the topics.
 And we're still seeing things like slips, trips, and falls. Mental health is a really big topic, continues to be a big topic. Psychological safety also remains a really big topic.
 Interestingly enough, the Institute of Work and Health located in Toronto, it's probably one of our larger research institutes in Canada, recently put out a study of what does the world of work, what are the issues that might be coming up that we need to think about in 2041?
 And there were some really interesting themes that came out. Certainly, workers are working longer. So there's longer lifespans and differences across generations. So you'll see people working past age 65
 working alongside those who are just coming out of school. Well, that's a 35-year difference, potentially, maybe 40-year difference, and very different perspectives on how to do work. So that is becoming a...
 Something that we all need to be conscious of, how we communicate and recognize that we communicate differently at different times in our lives. So that was an interesting observation. Certainly,
 Artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence as a coworker is something that I think is starting to sink in. What does that look like? You know, I'm not just going to be working with Jane or June or Bob. I'm actually going to be working with
 AI in some fashion or another every day. What does that look like? So what's the implications on workplace health and safety?
 for AI-driven change.
Perley Brewer   34:24
 So how are you handling AI at CCOHS?
Anne Tennier   34:25
 A...
 Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think we're trying to adapt just the same as everybody else, but we are very, very intentional about how we use AI and we make sure that human beings
 go through anything that we might do, that the sources that we use are credible. We still do our own research. We don't rely on AI at this point because there's still enough, what's the right term, hallucinations, I think, where information is not exactly how we might phrase it or
Perley Brewer   35:04
 Yeah.
Anne Tennier   35:10
 put it out. We do use AI to help some of our initial coding on some of the work that we do, but that's only the initial coding. Then our humans, our web developers take over and make sure that the coding that's done for all our products is safe.
 from a cybersecurity perspective and from a functionality perspective. But we're really in the baby steps of using AI. And I don't think we're...
 I don't think we're leery of it, but we maintain a healthful, a respectful and healthy distance, I think. And we want to make sure that we're using AI responsibly. It is a powerful tool.
 One of the, I think, big challenges is how you ask the question. How do you put the query? Because how you ask the question will determine the response. So if your question has inherent bias to it,
 it will give you an answer that is inherent to the bias that you've asked it about. So you just need to be very conscious of some of those things and make sure that if you're going to use AI to help inform the work that you do, that you're truly asking an unbiased question.
 Because then you still have to sort through the information and make sure that it is what you want and what you need.
Perley Brewer   36:53
 So, one last question now, and what's next for CC WHSCC?
Anne Tennier   36:55
 Mhm.
 What's next for CCOHS? Well, we continue to look at developing products and tools that are helpful to the workplace, that help them do the world, the work of health and safety in a more efficient way that we keep up with what's happening, what's new.
 at CCOHS, or out in the world of work, I should say, that were quickly responsive. And I think a good example is when the pandemic came out, we were on that pretty quickly, putting out tip sheets that maybe weren't the fullest answers, but then as we got to know more,
 we would course correct. The days of putting out a fact sheet and hoping that it's going to last for five or six or 10 years, that's not the case anymore. Workers and workplaces are changing rapidly. We need to make sure we keep current. And certainly looking at how AI
 will factor into what we do. That is a big question and something that we're approaching, but we're approaching responsibly and with caution. Yeah, just making sure that everything that we do delights the users of our work, that it
 hits the mark, that it's written in a way that is technically sound, but also in a way that people can understand. So we apply a plain language lens to everything that we do. And of course, we do everything in English and French, and that is always going to continue. We are looking at other languages now. We do have some resources available in other languages, but everything that we do will always
 In English and French.
Perley Brewer   38:43
 Well, look, Ken, thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to us. We certainly appreciate all the work that you've done in regards to health and safety. Thank you very much again for being with us today. For our audience, thank you very much for listening. Take care, stay safe, and have a good week.
Anne Tennier   39:02
 Thank you for having me.

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