Safety Leader Series: Rochelle Nieuwenhuis, Health and Safety Analyst at The Mustard Seed

The Mustard Seed is a charitable organization that works to eliminate homelessness and poverty where we serve. We provide support services including emergency shelters, meals, clothing, housing, employment coaches, and health services in 5 cities across Alberta and British Columbia. As our programs and locations have grown quickly, our leadership team recognized the need for an organization-wide health and safety system that would enable us to achieve consistency and a high-standard of safety excellence. 

We finalized our health and safety policies and procedures in 2019 and in January of 2020, I stepped into the newly created role of Health and Safety Analyst to bring our safety program to life. Some of our core needs at the time included a way to distribute health and safety information to all staff, a platform for incident reporting and investigations, and the ability to assign and track items from workplace inspections. 

The EcoOnline EHS management solution was our top pick due to its simple document acknowledgement functionality, its user-friendly forms, and the mobile app that makes it easily accessible to all our employees. Our front-line workers are focused on providing compassionate and dignified care to each person who walks through our doors and having the app readily available on their phones means that reporting an incident is that much easier amid the many tasks they are juggling.  

Thanks to the document acknowledgment functionality within EcoOnline, we have implemented an educational program of weekly safety topics that are digitally distributed to all staff each Monday morning. We cover topics such as violence prevention, mental wellbeing, COVID-19 protocols, safe lifting, and how to prevent needle-stick injuries. This approach not only builds up knowledge in a sustainable and digestible way, but also fosters a habit of regular safety consciousness and team engagement.  

After beginning our partnership with EcoOnline in May of 2020, we officially launched the program in October 2020. From October 1st, 2020 to October 1st, 2021, we have been able to utilize EcoOnline for the following:  

• 114 documents added, with a 76.83% document acknowledgement completion rate for 420 tracked employees. 
• 21,538 submitted and locked forms, of which, 20,496 were COVID-19 Employee Self Assessments 

302 Rapid Covid Tests completed, with 301 negative results.  

Little did we know in January of 2020 that a global pandemic was on the way. Many of our clients have underlying health conditions and are at particular risk of severe outcomes from COVID-19. To protect our clients as well as our teams, we needed a system to screen staff for symptoms every day. By using the customizable forms in EcoOnline, we created a straightforward process where staff could let us know if they had any symptoms or were a close contact before their shift started. This was a huge benefit in terms of ensuring the safety of our community members, as well as alignment with public health authorities. 

By using EcoOnline we can provide consistent education, engage staff in using our hazard report forms and COVID-19 screening forms, and ultimately keep our staff safe so they can provide the best quality of care to our city’s most vulnerable citizens. 

Rochelle Nieuwenhuis – Health and Safety Analyst,

The Mustard Seed

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