Tag Archives: program

The Top 5 upcoming OHS regulatory events you need to know about: #1

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It can be hard for businesses to determine which regulatory events will directly affect how they do business. That’s why I’ve put together a list of the Top 5 OHS regulatory events on the immediate horizon business leaders as well as OHS managers and staff need to know about.

Yesterday we talked about the revised hazard communication standard. Here’s the next issue in the Top 5:

1. The Injury and Illness Prevention Program:

OSHA chair Dr. David Michaels indicated in an online chat earlier this year that OSHA’s top priority for 2011 is publishing and enforcing a new, nationwide Injury and Illness Prevention Program (I2P2).

The scope of the planned regulation is sweeping: it will likely affect every employer in every industry, coast-to-coast. Michaels himself has called it the most significant change in workplace safety culture since OSHA’s inception 40 years ago.

OSHA is expected to model the program … Read more...

Training and quality: peas in a pod

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According to experts, though the connection can seem distant or indirect, proper training has a clear impact on quality, just as it has a clear impact on every aspect of business.

As business process design and ISO 9001 expert Chris Anderson noted in a blog post on the top ten root causes of business problems, poor training is the number one source of business issues. Two decades of business management led Anderson to place poor training ahead of poor methods, poor employee placement and poor engineering and design on the list.

“People don’t make mistakes,” Anderson insists in the post. “Systems make mistakes.”

And just as product and service quality issues arise from systemic deficiencies, employee performance — and its impact on quality — is correlative to the integrity of training management systems.

Training and quality are best thought of as peas in a pod — inseparable elements that should always be … Read more...

Prevention, training central to Ontario OHS reforms

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Ontario is poised to dramatically rework how it manages occupational health and safety.

Earlier this month Bill 160 was amended by the province’s standing committee on social policy and is now headed to the provincial legislature for a third reading and vote, meaning it could be law by as early as June. The proposed bill flows from the work of an expert panel formed in the wake of a string of workplace-related deaths across the province.

Focused on training and prevention, some of the bill’s key elements are as follows:

  • Training standards: The bill would call upon the Minister of Labour to set training program standards and ‘approve’ compliant organizations accordingly.
  • Training provider: In addition to minimum standards for training programs, those who administer training would also be required to achieve “approved training provider” status, though those certified under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act would be automatically approved.
  • Prevention
… Read more...