The “Keep Your Bits” videos that are part of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board’s latest campaign to promote workplace safety among young adults are meant to be funny — animated fingers, teeth and eyeballs that have been detached from their owners due to injuries on the job.
But as Jeff Lang, president of the WSIB says, the videos are humorous not because the content is light, but to get the attention of young people.
“We need…to build a safety culture for them so that they never take their eye off of that,” said Lang, whose organization provides wage benefits and medical coverage to injured workers through premiums paid by their employers.
Job safety is especially important for young and new workers, who are three times more likely to be injured within their first month of employment compared to experienced workers, according to the Institute for Work and Health.
Jody Young, the president and CEO of Workplace Safety and Prevention Services (WSPS), said those injuries are often due to three main reasons: inexperience using equipment, machinery or devices in the workplace; insufficient training on workplace hazards; or because young and new workers are typically eager to please.
WSPS is a not-for-profit organization that offers health and safety expertise, as well as information to protect Ontario workers and businesses.
“They want to perform. They don’t want to be embarrassed,” said Young, explaining why young adults may not ask the questions that could keep them safe on the job. “They don’t want to appear that they don’t know what they’re doing,” she said. And with the tight job market, Young speculates that anyone aged 15 to 24 is “probably pretty happy to land a job.”
In Ontario, about 30 per cent of reported injuries sustained by young workers are sprains and strains, with cuts and punctures, and bruises, contusions and concussions, also common.
According to the WSIB, the jobs with the highest number of injury claims among young people include: retail salespeople and sales clerks; material handlers; food counter attendants; kitchen helpers and related occupations; nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates; and construction trades helpers and labourers.
More serious injuries, and even fatalities, do occur.
In Ontario, 96 young adults aged 15 to 25 have died in the last decade because of work — seven of those in 2025 alone, according to the WSIB. That same year, 30,000 or so young people were injured at work, with more than 12,000 taking time off to recover.
WSPS has a network of safety professionals that educate students in high school co-op and tech programs or even students coming into a workplace for during Take Your Kids to Work Day.
Young says there are a number of things that teenagers and young adults, as well as their parents, can do to obtain more information about job safety and know what questions to ask if the workplace feels unsafe.
One is to complete safety awareness training, which employers are required to ensure that all workers have under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, even before a job placement.
The online training is free and teaches workers “the kind of legislation that we have and their rights and responsibilities within the workplace.”
Those rights include knowing about hazards in the workplace, the right to participate in health and safety through their joint health and safety committee or their worker representative, and the right to refuse unsafe work, said Young.
“Those three pillars are set out in our Occupational Health and Safety Act legislation and they apply to all workers from day one,” said Young.
If someone is injured on the job, the employer has an obligation to report the injury within three days, said Lang.
Parents can also help their kids get job-ready by teaching them how to voice their concerns about their work environment, practice that will help build their confidence to speak up at work.
Parents shouldn’t assumer that an employer is going to keep a kid safe, said Young. She recommends talking to kids when they come home from their first day on the job about their training, the equipment they use or the protective equipment they’ve been provided.
“And really empowering them that if they don’t feel safe, they absolutely need to stop and speak up.”
