Those are excellent questions.
1. The required content of workplace harassment/violence training under OHS laws varies little from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The potential exception is the Canada Labour Code for federally-regulated employees. But that’s probably academic since employees generally remain federally regulated regardless of where their site is located. But there’s a big caveat: Workplace violence training must be specific to the workplace and its unique risk factors and conditions. Accordingly, when employees move from one workplace to another, they DO need to be retrained on the specifics of that new workplace. For example, maybe the lighting, physical configuration, violence response and call for help procedures are different at the new location.
2. Workplace harassment is NOT workplace specific. So you don’t have to retrain workers you transfer.
3. There’s no stipulation–other than perhaps under the Canada Labour Code which I admittedly didn’t look up–that violence and harassment training be repeated each year or at any predetermined interval for that matter. The general rule is that retraining or refresher training must be provided as necessary in response to workplace incidents, significant changes in operations or procedures that weren’t covered in previous training or other indications that the previous training isn’t effective or up to date and needs to be revised.
I love these questions and bet you’re not the only person who harbors them. Hope the answers work for you. Have a great weekend. Glenn
