Canada Takes Mental Health Seriously

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Alison Grenkie

A new national standard for workplace safety was released today in Canada. The first of its kind in the world, the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace (CSA Z1003) is a voluntary standard that addresses a growing concern in the workplace – mental health.

With the support of the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC), the standard was developed jointly by the Canadian Standard Association (CSA) and the Bureau de normalisation du Quebec (BNQ) and its goal is to guide Canadian employers in creating workplaces that are psychologically safe and healthy.

When it comes to the workplace, the implications of mental illness are complex and extensive. MHCC President and CEO, Louise Bradley, has stated that mental illness costs the Canadian economy an estimated $51 billion annually, and that almost $20 billion of that comes from workplace losses.

Mental illness accounts for almost 30 percent of disability claims in Canada, and that number is growing. This standard has been a long time coming, according to Bradley. “The requirements for an employee’s physical health and safety in the workplace are a longstanding concern for Canadian employers. Now it’s time to consider the mental wellbeing of the workforce the same way,” she said in a June 2011 press conference for the standard.

Canada’s occupational health professionals should be sure to read the new standard, which will be free to the public for the first five years of its release. The standard will be made available on the CSA and BNQ websites.

Keeping Ontario’s Young Workers Safe

Posted on May 3, 2012 by JP Nadeau

According to the Institute for Work & Health, new workers are four times more likely to be injured during their first month on the job than at any other time. With summer getting into full swing, students and young workers are heading out into the job field and now is the time to ensure they are properly instructed, trained, supervised and following the proper procedures.

To ensure that our young workers are properly protected, the Ontario Ministry of Labour has created an Online Portal for Young Worker Safety. The portal includes links to resources, tools, calculators, videos and contact information that provide our young workers with the knowledge they need to stay safe of the job. Also included are helpful tip sheets that are individually tailored for young workers, parents, supervisors, employers and the general public.

The ministry has launched Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages as well to better connect with young workers which are now reaching thousands of users.

Top 10 essential tips to ensure top-notch training tracking

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Kristy Sadler

Gone are the days that monitoring and tracking employee training is a nice to have. Maintaining this information plays a big part in both having visibility into the competency of your employees and in mitigating the corporate risk that can devastate a company if it’s not in place.

And organizations use this information in multiple ways. If you have had any exposure to the ISO set of standards, you’ll know that pretty much every standard outlined by ISO (be it 14001, 9001, 26000, 50001 etc.) includes training as an essential component. So if you want to be certified or just conform to the standard, you better make sure that your training tracking house is in order.

But it doesn’t stop at ISO standards, look at the regulatory bodies around occupational health and safety, specifically OSHA in the US and WSIB and other agencies in Canada and around the world; not adhering to training requirements with relation to workplace safety can result in significant injury, possible fatalities and significant fines and loss of reputation.

If you aren’t sure where to start or maybe you just want to streamline your existing processes, this top 10 list can help ensure you are have a firm handle on tracking training in your organization:

Plan for it at the outset. Locking employees into their required training courses as part of their induction process is essential in making sure that training is ingrained within your organization.
Incorporate it into your processes. Ensure when you are promoting individuals or moving them within your organization that their new contract comes with a section that details the required training for their new role .
Reward it. Offer incentives for employees who score well on their training or complete it before their required time frame. Have a {insert role} leader board that highlights top performers. Even consider allowing those employees a role i n training others.
Test for it. Don’t assume that because you’ve trained someone that they’ve actually learned. You have to test and track competency to ensure that it has all sunk in.
Track it. As your workforce grows or people come and go it can be difficult work to keep track of who has taken which course, how they have scored and what gaps exist in training. A spreadsheet can get unruly quickly and is prone to error while a training tracking software system like Intelex works perfectly for this purpose (*bonus – it also allows you to schedule all of your employee training – see point #1).
Repeat it. Your long-term employees can easily forget the training that they went through years ago; designing and scheduling refresher courses for these individuals can help keep their skills up to date and ensure they are passing on correct processes and procedures to newer employees.
Set it and forget it. Having a system in place that ensures an employee in a particular role has a series of training courses assigned to them and if they don’t take the training required, their boss is notified, then their boss’s boss, helps to make sure that things don’t slip through the cracks.
Consolidate it. If you don’t already, consider having one person hold overall accountability for the training program. You’ll likely need departmental champions to manage the specific training needs for their functions but having one person that works with those champions to ensure you’re following these 10 steps can be a big help.
Communicate it. This might seem pretty straight forward but if employees don’t understand exactly what they are responsible for and why it is important with regards to training, the likelihood that they’ll take it seriously will be diminished.
Make visibility easy. If you have to look in multiple places or consulting multiple people to get a full picture of how your training program is running, you are making it too difficult and opening up the opportunity for error.

More than likely you already have several of these points in place, particularly if you are in one of the industries that are prone to workplace accidents and injuries. But if you need help streamlining your training, our Training Management software system can help manage at least 8 of these 10 steps. To learn more visit our Training Management product page or request a demonstration of the solution.