The District of Lake Country has been recognized with two awards from the BCMSA: the 2024 Organizational Safety Excellence Award and the 2024 Occupational Health and Safety Employee of the Year.
“It takes a team of dedicated staff committed to a safe workplace for themselves and their colleagues to achieve this recognition” says Caroline Barnhart, District of Lake Country, Manager, Human Resources and Safety. “We take great pride in receiving this recognition for a fourth year in a row.”
To receive this award, a municipality must demonstrate an outstanding safety record compared to peer organizations as well as year-over-year continuous improvement.
“There is no greater measure of success an employer can have than having Safety as the most important priority. Congrats to Sarah and all the employees at the District of Lake Country for their commitment to our program” says Paul Gipps, CAO.
The 2024 Occupational Health and Safety Employee of the Year award was presented to Sarah Goodwin, Occupational Health and Safety Specialist. This award recognizes a local government individual who has demonstrated an outstanding achievement in the occupational health and safety field.
“Sarah regularly enhances safety at the District whether it’s day to day improvements in incident and near miss reporting, instilling good habits of safety being top in mind in everything we do, or the more significant long-term projects such as implementing a new digital safety platform which adds efficiency, encourages timely safety training and keeping up to date with safety standards” says Trevor James, District of Lake Country Chief Financial Officer.
In receiving this award Sarah has demonstrated extraordinary leadership, driven organizational initiatives to improve process and safety performance, initiative and creativity in results that have contributed to the organization’s excellence, advocacy for safety committee’s annual goals and objectives, demonstrated tangible organizational improvement through metrics and demonstrated leadership to the commitment to health and safety in the workplace.
“I am both honoured and humbled to be recognized with this award” says Goodwin. “Building a strong safety culture is a continuous endeavour. It takes great dedication, leadership, and teamwork, and I am fortunate to work with people who are truly committed to providing psychologically and physically safe and healthy workplaces. I am proud to see how far we’ve come and the milestones we have achieved.”
The awards were presented at the BCMSA/PWABC Joint conference held in Penticton, October 7-9, 2024.
For more information contact:
Paul Gipps, Chief Administrative Officer, District of Lake Country
pgipps@lakecountry.bc.ca
Caroline Barnhart, Manager, Human Resources and Safety, District of Lake Country
cbarnhart@lakecountry.bc.ca
Sarah Goodwin, Occupational Health and Safety Specialist, District of Lake Country