Long-Term Health & Safety Trends Policy

This Model Policy is based on best practices rather than specific regulatory requirements and can be easily adapted without the need for significant revision for any type of workplace, industry or jurisdiction.

  1. PURPOSE

ABC Company has adopted this Policy to establish a system for analyzing data generated by its Occupational Health and Safety Program (“OHS Program”) to identify long-term workplace injury and illness trends that can be used to measure and improve the performance of its OHS Program to prevent injuries and illness and ensure compliance with [province name] Occupational Health and Safety Act (“OHS Act”), the associated OHS Regulations (“OHS Regulations”), and other applicable requirements and standards.

  1. POLICY STATEMENT

ABC Company believes that illness and injury prevention and continuous improvement requires regular and proactive analysis of illness and injury trends and patterns in the workplace to identify weaknesses in current initiatives and determine actions necessary to correct them.

  1. PROCEDURE

Each year, the ABC Company safety coordinator, facility manager, or person in charge of safety at the workplace and a member of senior management, in consultation with workers at the work site, either directly or through the workplace Joint Health and Safety Committee (“Safety Committee”) or Health and Safety Representative (“Safety Representative”), will prepare an annual Safety Trends Review based on data and reports, including but not limited to:

  • Workers’ compensation illness injury summaries;
  • Hazards, injuries and illnesses reported by workers;
  • Regulatorily required incident reports submitted to government agencies;
  • Summaries of first aid cases for the workplace;
  • Internal and external audits;
  • Monthly safety inspections;
  • Recommendations of safety improvements issued by the Safety Committee or Safety Representative;
  • Workers’ suggestions for improvements;
  • Work refusal reports.

The above data will be analyzed to provide a statistical assessment of the type of injury, time of day, type of equipment etc., including but not limited to with respect to:

  • Number of work fatalities;
  • Number of non-fatal accidents resulting in lost workdays;
  • Number of accidents in which the victim received medical aid but accrued no lost or limited workdays;
  • Incidence of occupational illnesses;
  • Number of incidents resulting in property damage but no injury or illness;
  • Number of near-miss incidents not resulting in injury, illness, or property damage but which had the potential to do so.
  1. CONSTRUCTORS, CONTRACTORS & SUBCONTRACTORS

All constructors, contractors, and subcontractors hired to perform work at ABC Company workplaces will be notified of this Policy and required to co-operate with ABC Company in implementing it. Constructors in control of work at an ABC Company work site for contract work expected to last longer than one year must provide for trend analysis of the work’s health and safety either by:

  • Integrating and coordinating their own quality and trends analysis programs with the procedures and modalities of this Policy; or
  • Implementing a separate trends analysis program and ensuring that such program is suitable for the workplace, coordinated with this Policy, and meets or exceeds the standards for trends analysis set out in this Policy for the review of health and safety trends.