McMaster launches employee survey to examine workplace safety incident reporting and response process


McMaster University is committed to providing and maintaining healthy and safe working and learning environments for all our employees, students, volunteers and visitors. To strengthen this commitment, McMaster invites all faculty and staff to participate in an anonymous survey regarding their experiences with the workplace incident reporting process.  

To better understand the level of awareness around the incident reporting process overall, all employees are encouraged to participate in the survey regardless of whether they have previously reported an incident or not. 

An incident could include physical or psychological workplace injuries, workplace violence and harassment, emergencies like fires or floods, threats or hazards (wet floors, broken equipment). The current requirement and process is the incident is recorded using this form and is responded to accordingly.   

The survey seeks information regarding the effectiveness and efficiency of our current processes in reporting and responding to workplace incidents, to identify opportunities for improvement. While this phase of the survey focuses on the staff and faculty experience, the learnings will be applied to any future work in the area. 

The “incidents” referred to in this survey differ from emergency response procedures (please visit the project page for more details).  

McMaster is conducting this review with the engagement of our consultants Emergency Management Group (EMG) and Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA).  

Your responses to the questions will be kept confidential and individual answers will not be shared with the university. The survey will be open until Sept. 12, 2023. Please see the project page for more details. 

Access the survey here.