'The bare minimum won't cut it': How employers can protect workers amid record heat levels

Extreme heat impairing worker safety, morale and productivity, academic warns

“Employers need to get ahead of [the heat] because it’s not going to change. Even if employers don’t think it’s affecting them now, it’s going to affect them in the next 10 or 15 years,” says Eva Glosson, adjunct professor at Olympic College in Washington.

From heatwaves in traditionally temperate regions to the intensifying burden on industries reliant on manual labour, the demands on employers are escalating. August 2024 became the hottest August ever recorded, marking the end of the warmest summer on Earth since global temperature tracking began in 1880, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

But the issue isn’t confined to sites and crop fields.

“Heat is an extr