Dr. Vicki Kristman: Distinguished Researcher Talk - "What Can Employers Do To Keep Employees Healthy? Build a Hockey Team: Eight Important Workplace Factors Impacting Employee Health and Disability"
About the Event
Employee physical and mental health is vital for workplace engagement and productivity. Unfortunately, unhealthy work environments are prevalent today. Offering wellness programs or wellness days are not the drivers of employee health in the workplace. Instead, improving the overall work environment is a far more effective way to keep employees healthy. I will describe eight workplace factors that I believe are the most important in defining a healthy work environment. I will use the hockey team as a metaphor for how employers can address these factors. I will close the presentation by briefly describing a current study testing my beliefs in Northwestern Ontario workplaces.
About the Speaker
Dr. Vicki Kristman is a Professor in the Department of Health Sciences and Director and Senior Scientist of the EPID@Work Research Institute at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. She holds a Lakehead University-Ontario Research Chair in Injury & Disability Prevention. She is an epidemiologist with a doctoral degree from the University of Toronto. She completed the CIHR Work Disability Prevention strategic training program as a postdoctoral fellow at the University Health Network in Toronto. In 2014, Dr. Kristman was awarded a prestigious CIHR New Investigator Award for her program of research on “Preventing Work Disability through Accommodation”. She conducts research to better understand factors associated with health, particularly mental health, and disability in the workplace to develop and test interventions to improve the lives of workers.
