Safety leader on why pandemic was a ‘baptism by fire’

Bank workers face numerous risks and safety has a huge impact on all aspects of the banking sector – though it can be initially hard to conceive what kind of injuries workers could fall prey to in such a corporate setting.

“It’s not just slips and falls, there’s so many aspects to [bank safety],” says Rosemary Hatnay, Director – Employee Wellbeing Solutions, Scotiabank.

For example, though they may be on the decline, robberies are still a risk for banks across Canada – and can be traumatic experiences for those workers on the front lines. To face this almost unique risk, “we partner with corporate security when it comes to robberies, because they do happen,” says Hatnay.

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From a health and safety perspective, physical safety is very important – but so is mental health. Hatnay says that Scotiabank is keenly interested in “how we can support our employees after traumatic events – we’ve created a robbery protocol in terms of how we manage robbery cases where we proactively try to prevent things such as PTSD as much as we can.”

The organization provides trauma and post-trauma counseling. It is also currently overhauling its robbery protocol approach to be more hands on and ensure that employees have all the support they need.

Hatnay began overseeing workplace accommodation, health and safety at Scotiabank in November 2018. Prior to this, workplace accommodation and health and safety were one big team under the employee relations banner. “There was a thought that perhaps this should be shifted under my oversight, as it better aligned from an employee wellbeing program delivery perspective, to overhaul it and deliver an optimal employee experience,” she says.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, the focus sharpened. Hatnay, who comes from a pensions and benefits background, says that she had to hone her workplace accommodation and health and safety skills and work with her team to develop a new mandate and direction – “it really was a bit of a baptism by fire approach to learning.”

So in September 2020, workplace accommodation and health and safety further split into their own functioning units. Hatnay oversees the standalone occupational health and safety team among other units. Having everything under the employee wellbeing solutions umbrella is “because we want to look at the holistic view and oversight of the team,” says Hatnay.

She says that the pandemic has been one of the biggest challenges of her career.

“It did put a lot of challenges on the team. Our team was literally 24/7 during this time. But the team was super engaged,” says Hatnay. She says that knowing that the bank was fully supportive of their work created a very successful approach to managing the pandemic. “It was amazing to see how quick we could turn around and provide the necessary support across the bank as quickly as we did.”

Being a national bank with multiple jurisdictions, having to handle regulations and public health requirements that vary from province to province, territory to territory, has been quite the undertaking during the pandemic. At the same, the organization had to manage COVID cases in the bank.

Hatnay says that she and her team are consistently looking at new ways to support and protect Scotiabank’s employees. Hatnay says that the bank is also looking to update its health and safety program and keep it current. The team reviews regularly, and employees are required to take a workplace health and safety course.

One silver lining to the pandemic is that it has brought more exposure to Scotiabank’s safety team and drawn focus on the importance of safety. Employees are more involved in safety than ever before, which is very important says Hatnay, because engaging employees over health and safety keeps the workplace safe – “it keeps our environment safe, because we need all of our employees to be eyes on the ground.”