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19-May-2022 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM - Innovative Design for Health, Safety and Performance

British Columbia Lower Mainland Chapter

Please join us for the upcoming webinar: Innovative Design for Health, Safety and Performance.

Event Details: Innovative Design for Health, Safety and Performance

Give your organization the best chance for success by strategically designing your system for health, safety, and performance. Designing for health, safety and performance mean that you first understand what your workers need to be successful in their jobs. This includes worker participation, prioritizing concerns and focusing on developing and testing human-centred solutions. 
Human-centred solutions involve using knowledge of human factors/ergonomics to fit the job, the equipment and the physical and organizational environment to the workers. Going through this design process will help boost the effectiveness, productivity and performance of your organization, as well as, the physical and psychological health and safety of your team.

What Will I Learn?   

  • Enhance your team’s creativity using design-thinking tools
  • Develop and test innovative, human-centred design solutions that work in the context of your system
  • Determine return-on-investment to gain organizational buy-in

Date: May 19th, 2022

Time: 12:00 pm-1:00 pm PST
Cost: Members Free / Non-Members $30 

Via Zoom

Speakers:

Era Poddar, M.Sc, Ph.D 

Gina Vahlas, CCPE, CHSC, CPHSA

 

Bio/Credentials:

 

Gina Vahlas is a Canadian Certified Professional Ergonomist (CCPE), a Certified Health and Safety Consultant (CHSC) and a Certified Psychological Health and Safety Advisor (CPHSA) working in the ergonomics/human factors field for over 25 years.  She was the in-house ergonomist at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where she facilitated change to improve health and safety and reduce WCB and absenteeism costs, leading to a Canada’s Healthy Workplace Award. She worked on many projects including the design of a new dental dispensary clinic, utilizing a participatory, human-centred design approach with systematic layout planning and mock-up trials. 

In 2007, Gina made the move to WorkSafeBC to work as an Ergonomist in the Prevention Division, where she provided ergonomics/human factors support to prevention officers, associations and employers. She has worked in a variety of settings, including manufacturing, construction, agriculture, health care, tree planting and child care, always with a focus on “work as done” and optimizing human and system/organizational performance.

Currently, she is an Occupational Hygiene Officer at WorkSafeBC using ergonomics/human factors to help employers set up systems for success in health and safety. She is also a board member for the College of Canadian Certification of Professional Ergonomists, a part-time instructor for Ergonomics in the BCIT Occupational Health and Safety Certificate program and an associate editor with the “Ergonomics in Design” journal.

 

Dr. Era Poddar is a specialist safety advisor- ergonomist, at Manufacturing Safety Alliance of BC. Era is currently advising manufacturing and food processing companies on Ergonomics and OHS programs, at the same time training and coaching local manufacturers in effective ways to control MSI at their respective facilities. Era has worked in multiple industries, universities, and governments across the globe. She is a great believer in incorporating the Human Factors and Ergonomics concept at the strategy level.

 

Dr. Poddar previously worked as an ergonomics and human factors consultant with leading multinational companies in the USA and ran an ergonomics consultancy business in Dubai. At the beginning of her career, Era was a professor in HFE in leading design schools (National Institute of Design and MSR University) in India. She also led ergo-design consulting projects with prominent industries simultaneously.