How Do We Handle “Mask Shaming” When We Return to Work?
Courtesy of Littler Mendelson P.C. Dear Littler: I am the VP of Culture, Inclusion & Belonging at a mid-size firm in the financial sector. With a pending Return to Office (RTO) date for most of our workforce just a few weeks away, I want to get ahead of an issue that I have seen developing among members of both our employee and client populations during some in-person interactions that we have had over the past few months: “mask shaming.” I wince anytime I hear an employee tell a masked colleague “You must not be vaccinated!” or a client who challenges [...]
Worker’s Memorial Day
Every year, on April 28, the world recognizes Workers Memorial Day. Today is the day we pay our respects to those who lost their lives on the job, and recognize the impact of these tragic losses on the families, co-workers, and communities of those we have lost. As we navigate our way out of the COVID pandemic, this year, like last, is especially somber given the increasing number of essential workers who put their lives on the line during the pandemic, some of whom got sickened and/or died. They were not all healthcare workers, many were grocery clerks and stock [...]
You Recognize Hazards in the Workplace But What are You Doing About Them?
30 years ago, the so-called Westray affair was one of the worst workplace disasters in Canadian history. At 5:20 AM on May 9, 1992, an explosion tore through an underground coal mine in Plymouth, Nova Scotia. Fires started. The ground above collapsed. None of the 26 miners inside the mine came out alive. What made it especially hard to take was that it was preventable. The mine operators knew that combustible methane gases were building up inside the mines but didn’t provide necessary ventilation or take other steps to abate the problem. Worse, the officials failed to warn the miners [...]
Raising the Temperature on Heat Exposure Training
Most areas are going to be entering their warmer summer months – and it’s not going unnoticed. Safety organizations like OSHA and Workers Compensation Boards are reminding industries to start training before it’s too late. According to the US Bureau of labor statistics, fifty-seven deaths occurred to workers ages 55 to 64 from 2011 to 2019. During that period, 144 workers died from environmental heat exposure while they were engaged in construction, repair, or cleaning, and 54 workers died while conducting materials handling operations. It's easy to assume that most people use common sense when the temperature starts to rise [...]
Teaching Fall Protection
Fall protection is a complex subject. It takes hours, if not days, just to come to grips with the regulatory requirements. And the regulations represent only a minimum standard. As safety professionals, we should be concerned with not just meeting the regulations but going beyond them. That might involve implementing voluntary standards from organizations such as ANSI and CSA. And, of course, we must also consider the recommendations of the PPE and equipment manufacturers. When teaching fall protection (about two to six times a month), you should always cover regulatory requirement. But also try to present a more holistic view [...]
How to Deal With Unengaged Learners
HOW TO BUILD A MORE EFFECTIVE SAFETY CULTURE IN YOUR ORGANIZATION? Adults, unlike children, teenagers and students, in most cases, have a lot of things on their minds and your eLearning course is probably the last one of them. In addition, your adult learners don’t see the rewards of their efforts as soon as they would expect, and giving them candy doesn’t work as it works with children. Also, academic habits, they once possessed are also long forgotten. Least but not last, a lot of the learners are often forced to take on your eLearning course to enhance their skills, [...]
When Communicating Safety – Keep Statistics Simple
Train the Trainer – Tips for Presenting From 2020 to 2021, the top five accident types for Company A in the field servicing sector were: struck by – 16% motor vehicles – 11% falls from elevation – 10% musculoskeletal – 22% Meanwhile, Company B in the drilling sector reported these figures: struck by – 16% falls from elevation – 22% caught in object – 10% musculoskeletal – 22% Not by the Numbers Now, without looking, can you repeat all but a couple of those statistics accurately? Probably not. No doubt they left an impression, perhaps even a surprise, but by the [...]
The Cost of Cheating on OHS Training
I came across an article today about PwC Canada taking "remediation steps" after 1,200 of its employees were caught cheating on training tests and it made me start to wonder about the costs and frequency of cheating in all employee training. I have an old college friend that is now a professor at Stanford University with a specialty in deception and the psychology of lying that can go on and on for hours about the effects that social media and online behaviour has had on normalizing, if not rewarding, cheating in the last decade - you can view a more [...]
The First 2 Questions an Incident Investigator Asks
Health and safety training gives workers the knowledge to recognize the hazards they face and do their jobs safely. It also helps employers fulfil their duty to protect worker health and safety. The first question an incident investigator will always ask is "did the employee receive adequate safety training to do the job?” Always to be followed by, "are employees receiving the legally required safety training for the industry/jurisdiction/hazards?" What does "adequate training" look like? Understands the needs of your employees. Who is being trained? What are the hazards the role encounters? What are the hazards of the Industry? Is [...]
This Date in History – April Fools Day
Horseplay Isn't Funny - Even on April 1st Be skeptical about anything you read, see on the Internet or hear on TV, the radio or even the phone. At least on Friday. Why? Because Friday is April Fool’s Day. You might wonder how the whole April Fool’s business got started, especially if you’re a history buff like me. I decided to do a little research. Here’s what I found out. First, foremost and fittingly, nobody knows the exact history of April Fool’s Day. The current thinking is that it began in France in 1582 when King Charles IX did what [...]
Pinchpoints and Machine Safety … Not Just on April 6th
You may be one of the many celebrating National Tartan Day on the 6th of April so thought this would be a good time to remind you that, if you feel you need to don a full swinging kilt or carry around a blanket of the tartan of your choosing, just remember to be safe around moving equipment and machinery. So now you may think – that’s ok! I’m not Scottish – no need to worry! Sadly - you’d be wrong – in fact, each year hundreds of thousands of workers are caught in-between some sort of moving equipment or [...]
Don’t Teach my Mother WHMIS
My mom works in a highly hazardous occupation. She belongs to a class of workers who are the most injured in British Columbia. According to WorkSafeBC’s 2020 annual report, people in her line of work are commonly injured during interactions with the people they care for. That’s right, my mom isn’t a lobster fisher or a steep-slope tree faller. She is a health care assistant (HCA). She has been one for more than twenty years. During that time, she has mainly worked as a home support worker; visiting the homes of the elderly to assist with things that they cannot [...]
