Employers of Young Workers
As an employer, you have a responsibility to protect your workers, whatever their age or experience. What you may be just discovering is how challenging it can be to fulfill those responsibilities when dealing with young workers.
Youth can be an exciting time filled with enthusiasm, creativity, high energy, adventure, and fun. These are admirable qualities, and ones we would not want to discourage in our youth. These very qualities, however, can sometimes lead young workers into dangerous workplace situations.
In fact, young workers are at greater risk of being injured on the job than any other group of workers.
The WCB has a number of resources to assist you in keeping your young workers safe on the job.
The WCB Guide for Employers of Young Workers includes tools and information on a variety of topics, such as:
- Young workers, their rights and responsibilities.
- Your responsibilities as an employer.
- Safety orientation, training and supervision.
- Hazard awareness.
The WCB has a youth education consultant available to work with you to develop health and safety programs specifically targeted to young workers.
To remind young workers of the ways they can own their safety, you are encouraged to display posters and postcard where workers will see them. (See more information on our What You Don’t Know campaign.). To help everyone understand their responsibilities around mental health, download and display the Mental Health at Work: A Shared Responsibilty poster.
The WCB wants to assist you to build safe workplaces for young workers and for workers of all ages. Explore the Safe Workplaces section for more information about workplace safety and injury prevention.
Source: Workers Compensation Board of PEI