Canadian Occupational Safety

6 Canadian Occupational Safety | www.cos-mag.com WORKPLACE NEWS New Brunswick passes workplace violence, harassment legislation T he Government of New Brunswick has passed legislation to protect workers from violence and harassment. The regulatory changes will come into force on April 1 to give employers time to complete risk assessments and put policies and procedures into place, said the government. It was originally thought that the regulations would be in effect on Sept. 1 of this year. Under the new regulatory changes, harassment and violence are defined as workplace hazards that affect health and safety. Sexual violence and harassment, domestic violence and intimate partner violence are also included. "These regulatory changes will ensure employees are protected from a wider range of workplace haz- ards," said Health Minister Benoît Bourque. "The additional time before the regulations take effect will give employers time to put proper measures in place to protect employees." The new regulations require all employers to develop and implement a written code of practice for preventing harassment. The regulations outline the elements that must be included. "The implementation of these regulations is an important first step in what we see as a long-term strategy to ensure all workers have safer work- places," said Paula Doucet, president of the New Brunswick Nurses Union. "(The union) has been advocating for these amendments for over a decade and to see them enacted by government is a huge win, not only for registered nurses, but all workers in this province." Under the new regulations, employers are required to perform a risk assessment analyzing the likelihood of violence in their workplace. For employers with 20 or more employees, they must develop a code of practice on managing violence in their workplace. Regardless of the number of employees, employ- ers operating a business in the following industries must also develop a code of practice related to work- place violence: government and third-party service providers under contract to government; health- care providers; veterinar y ser vices; pharmacies; education and child care providers; police and first responders; security services; retail services; deliv- ery services; financial service providers; alcohol and cannabis sales; taxis and public transportation; gaming; home support services; crisis counselling and intervention service providers. Employers with fewer than 20 employees that are not in these industries may still need to develop and implement a code of practice on violence. This is determined by the results of the violence risk assess- ment, the government said. New Brunswick is the last Canadian province to address workplace violence or harassment in its occupational health and safety legislation. New WCB rules for Alberta employers By Sheila Brawn A s of Sept. 1, employers in Alberta have to comply with new rules for paying health ben- efits to injured workers and for re-employing them once they are fit to return to work. The new benefit rules mean that employees off work with a work-related injury will continue to be covered under their employer's health benefits plan. Employers will have to keep paying health benefit premiums for up to one year while work- ers are absent as a result of a workplace injury that occurred on or after Sept. 1. Health benefits include things such as dental and vision care, medications and hospital, health and paramedic services. Not included are services covered under wellness benefits plans, such as yoga classes and fitness equipment, life and travel insur- ance and some over-the-counter medications. The obligation applies to all employers with health benefit plans if they were making contributions for the worker at the time of a workplace accident, with some exceptions. For example, volunteer emergency response positions and students would be excluded from receiving these continued benefits. If an employer's plan requires employee contribu- tions, injured workers will have to continue to pay their share. If they choose not to, their employer is not obligated to continue their benefits coverage. The obligation to continue health benefits for one year will apply even if the worker's employment terminates. "Any time an employer is terminating a worker, they should contact WCB to discuss the circum- stances surrounding the termination and their worker's ongoing entitlement to employment health benefits, as well as other benefits, such as wage loss benefits," said Cindi Schwartz, a corpo- rate communications representative at the Workers Compensation Board of Alberta (WCB). Employers that do not continue benefits coverage will be liable for any expenses the injured worker incurs that would have been covered under the plan. In addition, the WCB could levy an administrative penalty equal to the employee's health benefit pre- miums for one year. In case of any disagreements about benefits coverage, employers should keep accurate and up- to-date records related to the health benefits plan, said Schwartz. "We suggest employers keep copies of the worker's benefit plans at the time of the accident, 5 reasons why lagging indicators are problematic By Amanda Silliker L agging indicators, such as number of incidents, injuries and days away from work, are widely used in occupational health and safety — but they bring with them a host of problems, delegates heard at the Canadian Society of Safety Engineering conference in September. The first issue is that lagging indicators are negative and are premised upon the understanding that safety is the absence of bad, explained Tanya Hewitt, human and organizational performance specialist with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in Ottawa, speaking at the conference in Niagara Falls, Ont. "Safety being the absence of bad makes you hunt for bad. It makes you look for bad things. It makes you look for deficiencies. It makes you look for non-compliances. And this is going to get people guarded, you know, when all you're doing is looking for something to get them in trouble," she said. Furthermore, this forces safety professionals to be too narrowly focused. "If you put your blinders on and only look for what you are looking for, you will not see the big picture stuff, you just won't," said Hewitt. Another problem with lagging indicators is that they are quantitative. The metrics are rolled up and put into a dashboard without the safety manager having any idea how those numbers got there in the first place, Hewitt said. This is especially concerning because decisions are often made on those aggregate numbers. "This is bordering on unethical. This is not right. If you don't know how that data came to you, you shouldn't be making decisions on it. Period. You should have the full story," Hewitt said. Plus, these metrics don't include the "invisible numbers." "It could be happening all the time but you have these people at some part of the process fixing the prob- lem. If it's not reported into some sort of system, you wouldn't even know that it happened," said Hewitt. Yet another problem with lagging indicators is that they are historical by definition, and they are premised upon the "safety myth" that past performance predicts the future. "The future is super, super hard to predict and looking in the rearview mirror doesn't do it. Past perfor- mance does not predict the future," Hewitt said. The fourth major problem with lagging indicators is that they can be deceptive. For example, BP had a fantastic safety record at the time of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, having just won a safety award weeks before. But the investigation report said, "BP focused too much on the little details of personal worker safety instead of the big systemic hazards." "Reducing lost time for workers and making sure they wear the right kind of boot is important, nobody's denying that, but it isn't enough," Hewitt said. "You can think you're doing well. You can lull yourself into a false sense of security if you're looking at the wrong stuff." Finally, lagging indicators are problematic because they are highly gameable. For example, when there is external motivation, such as a financial bonus at the end of a successful project, the focus is on the reward. "You will hide stuff that shouldn't be hidden because the reward trumps the work," said Hewitt. Instead of lagging indicators, Hewitt recommends focusing on leading indicators, such as the number of safety inspections, length of time to implement corrective actions, the content of employee complaints, diversity of voices involved in decision-making and personal safety stories.

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