The Future of Work, AI, and Occupational Health and Safety: An Interview with Dr. Arif Jetha

Ashley: Hello and welcome to Safe and Sound with CCOHS. Today we're joined by Dr. Arif Jetha, a scientist at the Institute for Work and Health and associate professor at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Dr. Jetha studies how the future of work – and artificial intelligence in particular – affects the health, safety, and well-being of workers, particularly those most vulnerable to being left behind by the rapidly changing landscape. He recently led a team of global experts in a research study anticipating work and health challenges likely to arise by 2040. Welcome to the show, Dr. Jetha.

Dr. Jetha: Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be able to present on some of this work.

Ashley: So throughout the course of this research, your team scanned nearly 400 different signals of change to arrive at seven major trends. Can you walk us through what the process looked like and how that picture started to come together?

Dr. Jetha: It's important to start off by describing the approach we used, which is called strategic foresight. The goal is to develop a picture of what the future could look like – it's not necessarily about predicting the future, it's about understanding different potential futures. One way to do this is by scanning signals of change. What that means is our team, which was international, looked at academic references – peer-reviewed sources that folks at the Institute and I tend to work with more regularly – but we also looked at fringe, less traditional sources, like blog posts and social media posts. The goal was to think about how different people, different knowledge leaders, are thinking about potential changes that could emerge on the horizon. Sometimes the most speculative changes are the ones that lead to the most interesting conversations. They allow international, multidisciplinary teams to think about these future changes and engage in a conversation on resilience.

Ashley: That's exciting. The report describes this as a moment for a bold reimagining of how we define workplace safety. What does that look like in practice?

Dr. Jetha: I think first and foremost, it looks like health and safety leaders thinking a bit more about potential changes that could occur on the horizon. Oftentimes we're so bogged down in what's happening right now – which isn't surprising, because what's happening right now can be quite difficult, and there's a lot of complexity in our world in its current state. But while we're tackling the now, we should also be thinking about how things could change in the future, because things are changing really fast. We know things are changing technologically at a very rapid rate, and what the world of work looks like now will be completely different a year or two from now. Social, economic, and political changes are happening much more rapidly than in past periods, and I think it takes a more strategic perspective to look beyond what we're currently facing and consider what could happen – as a way to make policies and practices resilient both to the now and to the potential future.

Ashley: Right, I think that's a good segue. The report covers a broad range of factors, and you've just touched on a couple of these, from geopolitics to AI to climate. Which do you see as the most urgent occupational health and safety priority heading into the next decade? Obviously a lot can change in a short amount of time, but…

Dr. Jetha: To be honest, I don't know if I'd rank any of the different trends we identified in our report, but I'll say there were some that were particularly interesting and provocative to our group. Obviously, digital technologies are advancing at a rapid rate, in particular the adoption of artificial intelligence. I think that can mean a lot for health and safety leaders. On one hand, using these tools could potentially make work more productive and help workers by removing them from unsafe and stressful situations. On the other hand, it's changing working conditions – both physical and psychosocial – in ways we're still very unclear about at this stage. That's pretty scary, because workplaces are adopting these tools, but I don't think the health and safety field is as prepared as it needs to be to tackle the changes to our work environment, or the hazards that could emerge as a result of using them. Compounding that, I think employers – and health and safety leaders within organizations – may also be unprepared. And things are happening at such a rapid scale and pace that it requires health and safety leaders to have a lot of technological savviness, which hasn't traditionally been part of the job description, but I think that's quickly changing.

Ashley: Right. If there's one thing you hope employers and policymakers take away from the findings, what would that be?

Dr. Jetha: I think the overarching message is that thinking from a future-focused perspective can help you develop strategies, programs, and policies that keep an eye on both the now and the future. If we can create approaches to health and safety that are relevant to the present but also account for the different potential changes on the horizon, to me, that's a win – a good way of bringing together the now and the future, and that's probably what I'd really encourage people to think about. The other thing is that a lot of the changes we identified in the report are really a system of changes. Technology is affecting our social lives, both inside and outside of work. The way we interact with our physical environment is related to our use of technology, which is in turn related to social and political changes. So I think we often can't tease these changes apart, because they're interconnected – and it would be a mistake to focus only on technological change without thinking about the broader social and political systems they're embedded within.

Ashley: There's a lot to unpack there. Thinking from the workers' perspective, what's a key takeaway for workers trying to navigate some of these new challenges?

Dr. Jetha: I think one thing is that we need to build literacy around a lot of these changes happening around us. Take technology, for instance, since that's one we can wrap our heads around a bit more – we need to understand what artificial intelligence is, and what digital technologies we're working with day-to-day. That understanding allows us to voice concerns as they emerge, and to suggest changes workplaces should be making if these tools aren't being adopted in a way that's healthy and safe for the people in our working environments. That can feel quite daunting for many people. But I don't think this is just a message for workers – it's more of a societal message. We all need to think about how to better acquaint ourselves with these new technologies, so we can contribute to discussions about how they're used and flag any concerns we might have.

Ashley: That makes sense. Is there anything else you'd like our audience to know before we wrap up?

Dr. Jetha: I think the future, when we think about it, is this constantly changing picture. We looked at signals of change at one point in time, but I suspect if we conducted the same process right now, or six months from now, or a year from now, our picture of the future would change. I think that kind of dynamic, adaptable approach is necessary – we need to be aware of the changes happening around us and be able to adapt to them. A more dynamic approach to health and safety, I think, would be effective – and that goes not just for health and safety leaders, but workers, employers, and policy leaders too. Things are becoming way more complex, in my view, and it's important that we acknowledge that and be willing to adapt as things evolve.

Ashley: Thanks so much for joining us today, Dr. Jetha.

Dr. Jetha: My pleasure. I'm happy to be here.

Ashley: The study team's full report is available on the Institute for Work and Health's website. And as always, you can find information on a broad range of occupational health and safety topics on our website, ccohs.ca. Thanks for listening and stay safe out there.