Why Your Company Needs a Health and Safety Program

Posted by Elore Snow on February 4th, 2021

Simply put, a company needs a health and safety program to protect its worker, management, and the corporate entity itself.

The crux of Regulation 851, The Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA), is that the company must take every reasonable precaution to protect the safety of workers under their employ.

The following is and 8 Step process on how to achieve an effective Ontario workplace health and safety program for equipment safety.

1. Identify all actual and potential occupational hazards through a Faculty Audit. Facility Audit to be conducted by a fully insured Ontario Professional Engineer(s). Several engineering disciplines may need to be involved depending on the complexity of the machinery.
2. Ontario workplace health and safety requires the risk of exposure for workers to hazards be identified through a formal Hazard Analysis.
3. These hazards must then be eliminated through the implementation of controls, where necessary, to minimize the risk of exposure. This part of the health and safety Program requires the engineering design of safety control systems.
4. Works practices in the workplace must be monitored to ensure that the health and safety programs are effective and safety rules/procedures are being followed.
5. Unsafe work practices must be corrected is monitoring uncovers any hazardous situations.
6. A health and safety program must include a process for disciplining worker/or supervisors if they are in violation of the Ontario workplace health and safety policy.
7. All of the above must be formally documented. Engineering reports/drawings must be signed and sealed by fully insured and licensed Ontario Professional Engineers.

An effective health and safety program will help a manufacturing organization avoid the increased penalties under OHSA. For individuals this has been increased from 50,000 to a maximum of 100,000. For companies this has been increased from 500, 0000 to a maximum of 1,500,000, plus a 25% victim surcharge.