Barry had a wonderful sense of humour. What I remember him most for is his meticulous attention to detail and protocol as exhibited in this excerpt from the tribute I will pay him.

… he was a man of precision, care and exactness. Imagine this scene: in the middle of a grass field, with not a single person or other aircraft in sight on the ground or in the air, Barry, having completed the exterior aircraft check and pre-flight checklist, is now sitting in the pilot’s seat with me beside him when he opens the window and calls out in his loudest voice “clear the aircraft”. I suppose to the pilots in the room this may not seem funny, but to a non-aviation individual, this was comical. CLEAR THE AIRCRAFT!

Barry was the type of pilot who could have landed the airplane on the Hudson River (Miracle on the Hudson – gliding the plane to ditch in the Hudson River off Midtown Manhattan in 2009). Barry was the type of pilot I would have entrusted my life to.

This is the kind of trust and confidence that workers should expect from their employers and supervisors. They are the ‘pilots’ of a business with the responsibility to guide their workers to a ‘safe landing’. This responsibility must never simply be given to an individual because of seniority; this responsibility is a learned position that brings with it accountability, obligation, knowledge and duty. The Occupational Health and Safety Act has specific requirements and defines a supervisor as “a person who has charge of a workplace or authority over a worker”. With the high expectations and legal responsibilities that come with the supervisory position, supervisors must be equipped to carry out their roles to meet Ministry of labour guidelines competently. OHSA S. 27 (1)(2)

One of the first things a Ministry inspector will ask for when conducting a surprise inspection is documentation that a Supervisor has received training to competently carry out their duties. Do they understand the role of the Internal Responsibility System (IRS); do they know how to navigate the Green Book (OHSA and regulations); do they adhere to and enforce the company’s health and safety policies and procedures; do they know how to identify and manage hazards; are they able to conduct an accident investigation and, very importantly, do they have the skills to communicate with employees to keep them safe?

Becoming a competent supervisor does not just happen, it is a learned skill and position that carries with it legal responsibilities that, if not met, can lead to fines from the Ministry, especially in the case of an incident or accident where training cannot be proven with proper training records.

May all workers have a Barry in their lives whom they can trust to keep them safe from harm in the workplace.

Watch for next month’s Blog published in the second week of July

Sincerely,

Carola Mittag

Consultant and Editor for Mentor Safety Consultants Inc.

The post CLEAR THE AIRCRAFT! appeared first on Mentor Safety Consultants - A Safety Co Partner.

As background, we met many years ago and have remained in touch periodically over the years. My friend is an international keynote speaker and has spent the last 20 years transforming people, workplaces and communities through empathic behavior change. The emphasis on his presentations focuses on empowering people to be the best versions of themselves.

This friend is an avid advocate for living healthy through eating well and keeping physically fit. He started working for an employer last year and was involved in organizing volunteers for various events hosted by that organization. A few weeks ago he was physically assaulted (punched) by another employee. Besides being totally caught off guard, this goes against everything he believes in and discusses in his presentations, that being “to help staff become more self-aware of their interactions and behaviors and to increase employee engagement”.

The assault was reported to the NYC police where the response was that they wouldn’t do anything because he wasn’t injured and nothing prosecutable happened. The offender had taken my friend’s phone and tossed it away shortly after; he was able to retrieve it. The police said, had the phone been taken, then there would have been a felony committed and grounds for an arrest, but not for the physical assault.

We also talked about the follow-up by HR and management which, to put it simply, was almost non-existent.

This was a clear-cut case of workplace violence. How differently it would have been handled in Ontario. Under Bill 168; Occupational Health and Safety Amendment Act (Violence and Harassment in the Workplace), it is the employer’s responsibility to deal with this and ensure staff feel safe and work in a healthy environment. Violence and harassment investigations are mandatory when there is a formal complaint, or if the employer otherwise becomes aware of behaviour that contravenes the company’s policy.

Complaints should be investigated by someone in senior management, an HR representative and a member of the JHSC or health and safety representative. Investigation stages may include:

• Document review
• Interviews with the complainant
• Witness interviews
• An interview or interviews with the alleged harasser
• Examination of photos if applicable
• A review of any relevant electronic records, such as emails, phone records, texts, or video

All investigation actions (meetings, interviews, etc.), steps, and reviews must be carefully documented. Doing so supports due diligence. As well, the worker or workers who made the complaint must be kept apprised through the investigative process of the progress of the investigation.

I have also encountered workplace harassment, back in the day when it was overlooked, swept under the table and simply ignored. As we become more aware and open to discussing mental health, every incident of workplace violence and/or harassment must be addressed. It is an issue of a workplace’s health and safety culture.

I shifted from the original topic of this month’s Blog to tell this story as I felt it important to address the issue of workplace violence and how it is handled by HR and upper management.

Watch for next month’s Blog published in the first week of March.

Sincerely,

Carola Mittag

Consultant and Editor for Mentor Safety Consultants Inc.

The post A CASE OF WORKPLACE VIOLENCE – IGNORED appeared first on Mentor Safety Consultants - A Safety Co Partner.

The pandemic has changed the way we live, what we do, how we work and helped many of us prioritize what is and isn’t important. I believe we’ve all heard this statement and its many variations ad nauseum by now.

My priorities have been to purge, clear out unneeded, useless, irrelevant, redundant, immaterial, extra and extraneous “stuff”. In other words, a lot of my things have come out of the closet. Clothes that were once important and perceived to be needed in the business world are no longer relevant in my retirement.

In life there are many different closets that need to be purged. Our personal closets can be the obvious clothes closets or our private closets, including our mental and our physical states. But we also have fun closets, recreational closets, relationship closets and work closets because our lives are compartmentalized into these different areas. How you relate to your personal closets, how you use them and how you purge yourself of unneeded “stuff” in those closets is as individual as you.

Let’s look at our work closet, that part of our lives that takes up 90,000 hours for the average person over their lifetime. Because we spend so much of our time at work, we need to ensure that that time is well-spent, productive and rewarding. And, because our work responsibilities are diverse, whether as an employer, manager, supervisor or worker everybody approaches their work closet from their own perspective and according to their own needs.

What is common to everyone who works at any level is the need to return home safely. This means purging those things that put them at risk of illness, injury or death. It’s obvious that some jobs carry more risk of injury or illness by the very nature of the work and the equipment needed to carry out that work. In this case there must be a purge of broken equipment and/or processes that endanger workers as well as attitudes and beliefs that are no longer relevant in today’s workplaces.

Equipment and processes improvement are obvious fixes; however, they are dependent on the attitudes and beliefs of those in a position to facilitate those fixes, the employer or supervisor. They are also dependent on the conviction and actions of workers to refuse to work if they feel themselves endangered. It is every worker’s right to know about any dangers related to their jobs, to receive training relevant to doing their jobs safely and to refuse to work under dangerous conditions or when asked to use faulty, poorly maintained equipment. If these three worker rights are not upheld, then health and safety law (the Occupational Health and Safety Act – OHSA) is being broken.

Protecting yourselves from unhealthy and dangerous work is everyone’s responsibility and right! Allow yourself to purge your work closet of anything that might endanger you!

Watch for next month’s Blog published in the first week of April.

Sincerely,

Carola Mittag

Consultant and Editor for Mentor Safety Consultants Inc.

The post Cleaning Out the Closet appeared first on Mentor Safety Consultants - A Safety Co Partner.