Martin Shain

Dr. Martin Shain is the founder and principal of the Neighbour at Work Centre®. He is trained in both law and social science and helps private and public sector employers and unions understand and meet their new legal obligations to provide and maintain psychologically safe workplaces.

The Centre’s clients have included energy companies, hospitals, regional, provincial and federal government, unions, mental health agencies, benefits and disability consultants, manufacturers and retail associations.

Martin holds a Doctorate in Law from the University of Toronto and a Diploma in Criminology from the University of Cambridge. His earlier education in law was completed at the University of Oxford.

This academic background coupled with an ongoing career as a social scientist enables him to write and speak with authority on crucial relationships between law and science in the domain of workplace mental health. In pursuit of his longstanding mission to enhance the protection of workers’ mental health Martin has been the recipient of the prestigious Canadian Workplace Wellness Pioneer Award.

For many years Martin was a senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. The metric that he developed for Health Canada to assess high psychological risk areas as a key part of the Workplace Health System called the SSOS or Stress Satisfaction Offset Score (yielding the Business Health Culture Index or BHCI) has been used extensively across Canada and elsewhere. It is embedded in at least two commercial Health Risk Appraisals as well as in Guarding Minds at Work and has become a standard component of comprehensive workplace health promotion in Canada.

As part of his mission to enhance the protection of mental health at work, he has campaigned long and hard to make the National Standard on Psychological Health and Safety a reality - to help employers assess and abate risks to mental health in the workplace.

Martin completed three reviews of Canadian and international workplace stress-related legislation, regulations and case law that have served as foundations for the Canadian National Standard on Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace. For his discussion papers please see the Publications section of this website.

Currently Martin holds an appointment in the department of public health at the University of Toronto.

Martin is also a member of the Technical Committee of the Canadian Standards Association that developed the National Standard.