IAPA President's Award

IAPA’s President’s Award, IAPA’s highest honour, bestows “best in class” status on member firms that have achieved health and safety excellence, and are leveraging these achievements to benefit their community and stakeholders. Our awards program guides and recognizes firms in their quest for occupational heath and safety excellence. Effective January 1, 2009 IAPA integrates a healthy workplace component into the awards criteria. The aim is to promote a safe and healthy organizational culture, as well as worker access to personal health resources.

This integrated approach results in employees who are satisfied, engaged, committed, and productive. Employers can also anticipate other substantial organizational benefits: the same management practices that lead to healthy employees also lead to a healthy bottom line. For instance, research shows that a company's revenues and profit are directly linked to customer satisfaction scores, which are also directly linked to employee satisfaction scores. Visit our healthy workplace section for more information.

Is Your Organization Best-in-Class?
The President’s Award program has three objectives:

• Provide prominent public recognition to IAPA member firms that demonstrate “best-in-class” health and safety processes and results, and a commitment to HSW mentoring and outreach
• Inspire other firms to achieve superior health and safety performance, and
• Encourage these firms to serve as champions and sources of best practices

President's Award presentations are held with senior representatives from IAPA in attendance. IAPA can arrange to have local media attend the presentation and potential on-site plant tour if the firm requests this. Press releases are created in collaboration with the firm, distributed to local media and relevant trade publications, and published on IAPA's web site upon the completion of the presentation.

Determining Eligibility
Your firm is eligible for a President’s Award if it meets the following five criteria:

1. The firm is a member of IAPA.
2. The firm meets all requirements of IAPA’s Level III Achievement Award.
3. The firm has incurred neither critical injuries or fatalities, nor charges or convictions under the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) or Workplace Safety and Insurance Act (WSIA), for the two years prior to the application deadline, and current year to the date the award is issued.
4. The firm has demonstrated a lost time injury/illness frequency rate less than 25% of the equivalent WSIB rate group average and a total injury/illness frequency rate (lost time and no lost time) less than the equivalent Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) rate group average, for the two years prior to the application deadline.
5. Firm has made significant efforts to leverage its health and safety excellence to benefit the community and stakeholders in accordance with the health, safety and wellness (HWS) additional criteria.

*Refer to Ontario Regulation 834 made under the OHSA for definition of critical injury
**Refer to Ontario WSIB definitions for lost time and no lost time injuries. WSIB data will be used in case of discrepancy between firm reported data and WSIB data.

IAPA’s Application and Selection Process
The application process is now closed.

1. To consider your firm for a President’s Award, IAPA must receive the following by the application deadline:
• an application form (628 KB PDF) that has been signed by the business owner/senior site manager, and management and worker members of the joint health and safety committee and/or health and safety representative
• completed Injury Frequency Worksheet (230 KB PDF)
• a document containing your response to the HSW Additional Criteria (54 KB PDF), and
• a completed Workplace Assessment Report (730 KB PDF) for the IAPA Level III Achievement Award. This step may be omitted if IAPA issued your organization a Level III Achievement Award within the current or previous calendar year.
  
  
2. After reviewing the information, IAPA will conduct an on-site assessment. This assessment may include:
• discussions with senior management and JHSC worker/management representatives
• a review of supporting documentation, and
• observation of working conditions to confirm that ongoing compliance with Level III Achievement Award requirements and additional requirements of this criterion are being met.
  
  
3. If your firm meets all of these requirements, IAPA will notify you and arrange a formal award presentation.

Maintenance of Standing

IAPA recognizes that companies go through a rigorous application process within the IAPA Health & Safety Awards program, culminating in receiving our prestigious President’s Award. We also believe the level of commitment demonstrated for health and safety excellence will be maintained for subsequent years. As such, the term of our President’s Award has been expanded from one to three years.

To maintain their standing during the three-year term, existing President’s Award recipients must meet the criteria in a Declaration of Conformity (633 KB PDF), and submit the completed declaration annually along with an updated Injury Frequency Worksheet (230 KB PDF).