Canadian employers earn recognition for data-driven workplace safety
Canadian Occupational Safety has released its 2026 5-Star Safety Cultures special report, recognising organizations that have moved beyond reactive occupational health and safety programs to embrace predictive, data-driven approaches to worker protection. The report profiles several companies demonstrating that the best safety culture in the workplace is no longer built on incident response alone.
From reactive to predictive: a shift across industries
The thread running through the report is a fundamental reorientation in how safety is practised. Rather than waiting for incidents to occur, these organisations have built the data infrastructure and cultural conditions to identify hazards before workers ever encounter them.
At Morguard, OHS manager Cesar Paredes leads safety across approximately 1,200 employees spanning seven Canadian provinces and roughly 10 American states. "Forward thinking is all about prevention," Paredes says. "There has been a huge shift in the last decade in how we as OHS professionals predict an event from happening."
At Siemens Canada, head of environment Nada Vuckovic uses digital twin technology, virtual replicas of proposed factory lines, to simulate worker interactions before any equipment is installed, resolving ergonomic and operational hazards before they exist in the real world. "We fit the work to the human, not the human to the work," Vuckovic says.
Data from the field driving measurable results
Top Grade Energy Services, an Alberta-based firm founded in 2022, built its safety program around a field-first data philosophy from day one. In 2025, submissions of the company's Stop and Think proactive hazard assessment tool rose by 448 per cent. The company also found that in approximately 60 per cent of incidents reviewed, relevant proactive hazard assessments had not been completed that day. President Ryan Resch sees AI as the next step. "Our data set can be modelled with triggers to gain insights from AI," he says. "We're excited to march that path to see how things get even better based on what our people are actually seeing."
At Sanofi Canada, head of process excellence Vicki Choy feeds hazard reports into an AI analysis tool that identifies recurring themes and triggers site-wide safety communications. "Our mission is to predict safety in the future — to see where there are high-potential risk areas and prevent those risks before they become incidents," Choy says.
Technology enables — but human connection sustains
It’s clear that technology alone does not build a strong safety culture. Independent experts Brian Preston and Amanda Valin of TruStar Safety note that AI tools are only as good as the culture deploying them, and that data quality and transparency are essential to ensuring technology builds trust rather than eroding it.
The full 5-Star Safety Cultures 2026 special report, including in-depth profiles of each winning organisation, is available now.
