"If you look at Ontario's prevention wing, you'll see 14 associations. Each one of these associations is like a Health and Safety company, that specializes in one section of the economy. It's genious because if you're in Construction, you don't want to distract yourself with Health Care or Education safety, and you don’t need to. Your clients are in the construction sector. That makes you an expert, perhaps a world expert, on Health and Safety in construction.
Jeff, BSc, CCPE
Provincial and state level co-operation is an excellent example of how human factors organizations can collaborate. They have broader goals than do members across a single organization.
Prevention Dynamics, (the prevention wing mentioned above) for example, aims to support cost-effective, efficient collaboration on injury prevention, improving safety across the province of Ontario. How each individual organization accomplishes that goal can vary significantly.
This dynamic allows each association to specialize, and tailor their training, practices, and resources to their specific clientelle. At the same time it provides an opportunity for members of one association to collaborate with members of another.
For example, an ergonomist in one association might ask other associations
"Do you have an Ergonomist? What is their role? Do you have a written programme?" in an effort to improve their own work.
If certain practices prove to be useful across across several associations they can be shared and adopted freely.
The additional benefit to this dynamic, is that there is no incentive to compete (if ever there could be) because each association has its own clientelle.
In the case of Prevention Dynamics, this non-competitive collaboration is reinforced by the fact that it, and the health and safety associations are directed by a provincial council: The Occupational Health & Safety Council of Ontario (OHSCO) and funded by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB)
With all that being said, this type of multi-organization cooperation isn't limited to shared parent corporations like Prevention Dynamics; sometimes they can be even more loosely connected by a national connection.