Ontario broadens scope of workplace safety

Ontario has launched a new four-year plan to improve worker safety. The province has already reduced workplace injuries by 20% over the past four years, allowing employers to avoid as much as $5 billion in direct and indirect costs.

The new plan will enforce the province’s Occupational Health and Safety Act, while broadening its scope to include sector-specifc hazards and partnerships aimed at promoting a health and safety culture.

The compliance strategy includes yearly plans for sector-specifc hazards, including the industrial, construction and mining sectors. This builds on past approaches by using several criteria to identify workplaces for proactive inspections. The strategy focuses on identifying workplaces with high injury rates, costs or a history of compliance problems, as well as hazards inherent to particular types of business activity.

 

The Stats: Canadians workaholics?

Canadians are having a tough time cutting ties to the workplace while on vacation. Many say they work while on holidays, but they also plan their vacations during work hours.

  • 43% of Canadians do not work at all while on vacation
  • 23% occasionally check email and phone messages
  • 17% make themselves available for emergencies only
  • 17% never really stop working, even during holidays
  • 25% do some vacation planning while at work

 

 

Hot Topic: Mental illness a growing concern

Mental illness results in 35 million workdays lost every year in Canada—not to mention significant financial losses due to lowered productivity. A recent survey of more than 450 Canadian employers finds that while mental illness in the workplace is an increasingly important issue for 80% of HR professionals in this country, a fair number of senior executives (13%) lack a strong awareness of the illness’s impact on productivity. HR professionals report that a lack of measurement of the impact of mental disorders on their organizations is an impediment to obtaining senior-level support for addressing these issues. Only 22% of respondents measure the impact of mental illness, typically through disability claim statistics.

Sources: Vacation — Monster.ca, online survey, July; Safety — Ontario Ministry of Labour; Mental health — Mercer Canada, 2008 Mental Health in the Workplace Survey, July; Happy hour — CareerBuilder.com, online survey, June.

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© Copyright 2008 Rogers Publishing Ltd. This article first appeared in the September 2008 edition of WORKING WELL magazine.