Advancing your Workplace Safety Program

Mallory Hendry  00:00:05 

Hello everyone and thanks for joining us today. I'm Mallory Hendry, Content Specialist Manager with Canadian Occupational Safety. And I'm pleased to introduce today's webinar "Advancing your Workplace Safety Program" sponsored by Avetta. Our speaker today is Dylan Short, who is the Managing Director of The Redlands Group and Canadian Mirror Committee Vice Chair and Expert. He's also a distinguished Avetta Fellow, which is a group comprised of industry leaders from Canada, the US and across the globe that helped to shape the future of supply chain management through thought leadership projects. He was also recently appointed a global expert on ISO 45,001 representing Canada. Over the next hour, Dylan will provide guidance on how to elevate your safety program and safeguard your most valuable asset which is your people by harnessing the key elements of ISO 45001. At the end of the presentation, Dylan will participate in a question and answer period. So be sure to type any questions that you might have into the q&a box within the webinar software. You can also add any comments that you may have in the same box as well. We've also sent a link to a free contractor and supplier risk assessment from our sponsor Avetta. This can be completed in five minutes and just help your organization identify where your current safety risks and gaps are, and how to close those gaps. So I will turn things over to our host now to begin the presentation. Take it away, Dylan. 

Dylan Short  00:01:35 

Thank you very much Mallory and really glad to be here. Thank you for the invitation to talk about one of my favorite things ISO 45001. And what we can learn from key elements in 45001. So for our conversation, today, we're going to cover off a number of different things, we're going to first start in ISO language about understanding the context of the organization. And what does that mean, I'm talking about health and safety risk management as one of the key pillars of what's different for ISO 45001, that you might not see in some other management system standards. We're going to talk about setting objectives and have how to have a plan to achieve those objectives as we work through, we'll talk about management review and continual improvement and engaging your senior leadership and your health and safety program to be able to get the results we really want. And after we've done kind of covering that, we're also going to have a short update about ISO 45001, and the suite of standards that are around it, what's happening on a on a global basis with ISO 45001, and kind of what are some of the big picture next steps. So we'll work through a number of these kinds of things as we go throughout the day. But we're going to start off our conversation here with a poll question for you. The question is, is how would you describe health and safety in your organization? So first answer could be we manage issues as they arise. Number two, our programs meet regulations. Number three, our program is corps certified. Number four, our program is based on a management system standard, or number five, our program is certified to a management system standard. So just give you a few seconds here to be able to go through that. Here we go. So our results looks like the majority of people have a program that meets regulations, a lot of people are corps certified. That's, that's really interesting to be able to see nobody on the call is certified to ISO 45001, or another management system standard. So so it's great that that you're in that area, because a lot of what we're going to talk about today, I think will really be able to help support moving your program forward, sounding like you have a good hold on your health and safety program today. So the first area that we're going to talk about is the understanding that context of the organization. So under 45001, section 4.1 is about the organization and its context and it says the organization shall determine external and internal issues that are relevant to the purpose that affect its ability to achieve the intended outcomes of an OHS management system. Welcome to the world of ISO language and run on sentences that we would probably get in trouble for if we were in still in school. But there's a whole bunch of things in here to be able to unpack and understand. So let's kind of break it down into a number of different areas. You know, we have to determine the internal and external issues that can affect your health and safety management system. So we have to understand who that is who that actually comes through? How does that put together, we have to understand the needs and expectations of workers and other parties and to determine the scope, take into account things like your supply chains, boundaries, internal and external issues required requirements of workers are there interested parties. So in the ISO world, that's all of the various things that you need. But for us, to be able to really focus in the context of it, we need to really focus on the needs and expectations of workers and other parties. So one of the questions that comes up is is do we actually ask our workers engage our workers in what is the need or what's working? Well, what's not working? Well, from a health and safety aspect, some of us are able to do this by working together with a joint health and safety committee or health and safety representatives. Sometimes we have, you know, consultation groups for those kinds of things. But there are other interested parties, you know, the easy one to kind of think about if we're in a unionized environment is is the union or labor organization that we work with. But sometimes you'll find that we have contracts that we have to be able to report health and safety information, provide health and safety information to various individuals as we work through. So understanding the context or understanding what applies to health and safety in our organization, what are those internal external issues and a really good source of information being from workers, the people who actually do the things on a daily basis, a different way to think about it is is this is kind of a the context of the organization. This is everybody who is engaged in the organization's health and safety program. So top management, top management in ISO speak is a term for the leaders who are most accountable for things. So that's usually a CEO, a president could be a CEO, or a vice president of operations, those kinds of things. And then you have workers and everybody is a workout. So they split them out into managerial workers and non managerial workers, all workers have responsibility. Managerial workers have some additional responsibilities. You know, that's, again, this is ISIL language. So in our world, we think about them as supervisors, they could be managers, but if they direct other people's work, outside of that, though, then we have areas that we start to extend those external parties that I just talked about our contractors, subcontractors, those are individuals who have we have some form of control around those people. So whether they're workers or contractors, subcontractors, we're extending our health and safety program to those individuals. There are contractors in our organizations at times where we'll have, say, a construction project. And we name them as a constructor, which is allowable in a number of our jurisdictions across the country to be able to look at understand what does that mean, so they're really managing safety as an independent component. But it's looking to add, how does that fit for the context. And then outside of that, there's a large number of other interested parties that we should be thinking about, you know, when it comes to the context of the need for health and safety program of what should it be delivering. So it could be your suppliers, your clients, customers, those are areas that are kind of, you know, areas that we think about more often. But we don't always think about real regulatory authorities as being part of the interested parties. You know, we remember them when they show up, and they do inspections and whatnot. But then there's also others where it's owners and shareholders, which is where we get into more of an ESG conversation at times to be able to deal with these kinds of things. It could be your local community and your neighbors and how what you do may affect them. And many times we think about that in an environmental context. But we also need to think about it in a safety context. And if how we're doing things, is that going to affect those other parties that are relative to us? So it's kind of a bigger picture. But going back and looking at an understanding starting with asking our workers, asking the people who are engaged in in activities on a daily basis, what's working well, and what's not working well? And how can we move forward with some of these as various ideas. 

Dylan Short  00:09:27 

So that's kind of the first pillar around understanding health and safety from a ISO 45001 point of view. The second one is a bit of a shift in thinking about looking at risk. So I'm going to give you a couple of definitions to start. So just so that we make sure we're all on the same page. First is a definition of a hazard. Hazard very simply from the Canadian Oxford Dictionary is something that can cause an injury or harm. harm is something that causes loss or pain. So The combination of those those kinds of things is where we end up with a definition around something like risk. Here, we use the Zed 1002, hazard identification, elimination and risk assessment and control, or the CSA standard on risk health and safety related risk as the combination of the likelihood of the occurrence of harm and the severity of that harm. So the the context differences is that in a health and safety context, risk becomes the center point and not regulations. So it allows us to be able to look at and understand from a risk point of view, where harm could happen, where severity of harm can happen, we talk about it as hazard identification and risk assessment and a number of our processes. So that we looking at an understanding these kinds of things from our context. So go back to understanding what is the work that we're going to manage? That's the context of that organization. So we understand the once we understand what does that look like? Then we need to understand what are the inherent hazards? Where can harm happen? What's the likelihood and severity of that harm, that's where we get to a risk level to be able to talk about this. So that leads us into having an effective OHS risk assessment process. And risk is, is one of those areas that can be a little difficult or feel daunting at times. But it's actually not all that difficult once you get used to applying risk in conversations instead of just relying on regulations for what our health and safety program is. So at the beginning, a number of you mentioned that your program is structured to be regulatory compliant. That's awesome, because getting to regulatory compliance is a difficult tasks to be able to do. Those of you who are corps certified, will have embedded systems that identify hazards and may do some risk assessments depending on where you are on the country and, and which of the core standards you actually follow. But under a health and safety risk assessment process, which starts with having a clear scope of application, understanding is this routine work is this non routine work that we're assessing? Is this under normal conditions is this under extreme conditions or emergency conditions, some tools are more effective than others for doing these kinds of things, that we have a set of standardized terms, that those terms all have concise definitions. And then we have a standardized method for calculation. And at the end, we have outcome actions, all of that sounds a little nebulous. So I give you a picture to be able to look at it to understand this is what from our point of view, my organization, this is how we assess risk as an organization. So you see, on the right hand side, it talks about organization will ensure that there's a process to identify, evaluate, control and monitor hazards in the workplace, that may pose a risk to health and safety of our team members. So that's my scope. So it means that we're looking at it, as you know, for our point of view, that we're looking at kind of normal work, and what does that look like? Over on the left hand side? At the bottom, we have our guidelines around likelihood and severity. Those are the two dimensions that we're actually going to assess risk. In each of them, we have five terms, each of those terms are not only given a numeric value, but given a definition of what does that actually mean. So based upon that we can go through and and look at any type of work and work related activity, and then be able to assess what is the likelihood what is the severity of an injury happening in the workplace? So is it possible and moderate? Is it something that is conceivable, but it would be catastrophic? Is it you know, something that is almost certain to have an end major, all of those things lead to a score at the end with starts to tell us about what and why we need to do. So the last portion of this is the outcome action, which is in the bottom right hand corner, where depending on what the score is, this is a field level risk assessment tool that allows an individual to say as a worker, when I do my risk assessment, if I come up with a ranking of one to six, I have to check to make sure that all safety controls are in place, and equipment is in place and then we move forward as normal. If it's a seven to five, then I need to be able to check and make sure that we have controls and equipment in place. But also make sure that the expectation is that we have some sort of procedure or work instruction to follow. And then if it's 16 to 25 So what we would classify as a high risk area. Is this a non routine hazardous task if so, maybe we need to find a non routine hazardous task process. Make sure safety controls equipment in place procedures for Follow, but also notify the crew, the supervisor on what we're doing, how we're doing. So this is a tool that would allow us to be able to move through some of these as a conversation to help us understand what does that actually look like? The purpose of doing risk assessments, it leads into a lot of data, a lot of information. But at the end of the day, the whole purpose of doing a risk assessment is to help create focus around where do we want to create a greater level of control, based upon the risk that is posed. So we've all seen the five different levels of a hierarchy of control before elimination, substitution, engineering, administrative and personal protective equipment. But the application for those really comes from if we have a high risk area that is not well controlled. What do we do to be able to put in controls? So if we're doing things like working at heights? is our only controls administrative and, and personal protective equipment? Things like a fall protection, harness and gear? Or do we have additional components to go with that? Are there ways to be able to either engineer out certain things, we put guards around certain pieces of equipment or things like conveyors? Or do we actually eliminate those kinds of things where we remove certain pieces of equipment from, from our business, so that it doesn't allow us to be able to do that? So in the ISO world, it really is, well, you have to account for regulations. It really is about understanding, in your context, where does risk lie in your organization, and how is the organization controlling that. So when you have an introduction of a new kind of set of regulations, so back around 2010, in, in Ontario, there was an introduction of regulations around workplace violence and harassment organizations that had a risk assessment process and, and a robust process around that had already potentially identified that workplace violence or workplace harassment can be a risk in the workplace, and that we need to control it, if we're relying on regulations. And this is a new thing for us. And it's not that it's a bad thing, because not everybody who does risk assessments is going to identify everything. But it helps us to be able to be ahead of some of the areas of what we can do, and not just rely on a prescriptive list, from a regulatory point of view to be able to manage some of these kinds of things. So it allows us to be able to have that viewpoint that risk really allows us to look forward in the organization to be able to understand where we expect problems that could arise and try to be able to get out ahead of them using our hierarchy of control to be able to have an effective and sustainable process of managing a work to a safe work operation. So that's kind of area number two around it. And in the context of the organization and having the risk management, you know, and doing risk assessments of our work, we're going to end up with a lot a lot of priorities. So at the end of the day, one of the challenges becomes in every organization is about having objectives and plans, how to be able to meet those requirements. How do we actually go through to be able to understand what do objectives and, and requirements really look like? So again, looking at ISO requirements, section 6210, h&s objectives, the organization shall establish OHS objectives that are relevant to the functions and levels in order to maintain and continually improve the OHS management system and OHS performance. So there's a number of things again, to be able to unpack looking at all of this here. So we're going to lead us into our next poll, just to understand before we talk a little more in depth about that is how would you describe in your organization OHS objectives in your organization? Sorry about that. 

Dylan Short  00:19:11 

One, there are no formal OHS objectives in my organization. Number two, OHS objectives are based on injury rate reduction, not a bad thing, but potentially limiting. Number three OHS objectives are linked to OHS program projects. So individual projects, individual items, new change in regulations that's come up. Or number four OHS objectives are linked to overall organizational objectives. pause there for a second, I'll let you click through on the votes. See what our results look like. Oh, we're kind of all over the map. But OHS objectives are linked to overall organizational objectives. So 46% That's when you're areas. So that's really interesting to be able to see that that's unusual for a lot. But also almost 25%. There's no formal OHS objectives. So there's an area here that we'll have some opportunity to kind of work through and and talk about OHS objectives and how they fit in your organization. So as I mentioned before, under the ISO requirements, there's a laundry list of kind of items to be able to look at. First, they have to be consistent with the health and safety policy. So that might sound a little strange. But if the policy is, you know, makes a state that we are an organization that has a vision of zero injury, then your objectives need to be able to look at and understand what does that look like. If your health and safety policy is focused around injury reduction or some other kind of focus area, then again, it has to be consistent with with what that is. Number two, it has to be measurable or capable of performance evaluation. So it means that the objective and plan has to be able to be something that we can tell when we're on track, we can tell when we're ahead of track. But we can also tell when we're off track or behind, then it has to take into account applicable requirements. applicable requirements are things like regulatory requirements, client requirements through things like contracts, it may be through agreements with organizations like labor organizations, or supply of labor companies, those kinds of things, they also have to take into account the results of assessment of risk. So again, linking that back into we understand, you know, what is our context of our organization, then we assess risk of work at work related activity. And then based upon that risk assessment or the data that comes out of the risk assessment, then we can create objectives in areas to be able to control risk in a different way in a greater way in a less way. It also has to take into account results of consultations with workers and worker representatives. So remember, back in the content in the context area, one of the areas to be able to seek information about what our areas of areas of development is around talking to workers who do the work. The results of consultation with workers and worker representatives may sound like a little bit more of a natural thing. Because here in Canada, in all of our provinces and territories were mandated to have health and safety representatives, or health and safety committees, and depending on the size of organization, but in around the world, that's actually not necessarily a normal portion of the conversation. My question to you, though, is is or have you considered when you're developing your health and safety objectives to actually ask workers and your health and safety committee to be part of that conversation? Is that something that you're actively doing to be able to work through and understand what does that look like? What are their suggestions on areas that we should focus on? What is it that they're able to provide for that context of information? So this is an area that is an area of great opportunity, from our point of view, and we work with organizations, because many times we treat our committee as kind of a transactional activity, that focus is really around inspections. But are they looking at our health and safety program? Are they looking at our various policies and and providing feedback on the safety system, which is part of their internal responsibility system work? The next areas is it has to be able to be monitored, be communicated and be updated as appropriate. All three of those kind of combined together well, to be able to understand that we don't just set it and then forget it come back at the end of the year and say, Hey, did it get done or not. But we also have to monitor things, we have to tell people what the objectives are. There's a whole bunch of different ways of doing that. Many times if we are engaging our committees and asking them for input, we can also engage our committees to be ones that helped communicate to say, here's some of the health and safety goals objectives for the next year. And then we have to update those on an ongoing basis. So in all of those, we can ask ourselves a few different questions. When you're planning and objectives, you need to determine a few things. What is it that will be done? What is it that we're actually going to do so what is the objective? And can we be super clear about what does that actually look like? Next question is What resources will be required to get the plan done? So it has kind of a couple of things to it. One is is that first we need to have a plan so to be able to do whatever the what is so if we're going to be able to create a new inspection system that's automated Then we need to be able to understand well, what are the steps that need to be done and put that into a plan? And then to what are the resources to be able to get that done? Not sure about in your world, but in my world, usually that means I have to go and ask somebody for resources, I don't get to just to approve everything. There's no organization I've met yet that has unlimited resources for their health and safety programs and plans. So it means that we have to be able to go to somebody to be able to ask those questions, who will be responsible for what and when. So again, back to our plan, and any of those any of you who have taken or work with project management processes, it's an area that we'll be able to be helpful for you to be able to follow that because a project management plan is really an area that helps to be able to identify things like who's responsible for what, what parts of the plan, and when are they going to be responsible? How are the result is going to be evaluated? So this is a key area that we need to really understand. We don't just do something and then move on. But did we actually make answer the question to say, what does this look like? And how do we actually be able to get to know that we're actually done, that what we did is successful. The last is how will actions be integrated into the organization's business process. Many times when myself and my organization we get called in to be able to help help solve health and safety problems. One of the challenges is, is that the health and safety process was set up to run independent runs on its own, whether it's an inspection program and investigation process, some sort of, you know, training programs and those kinds of things. It's done outside of all of the rest of the organizational processes. So part of what we really focus on what we help organizations to do is not just solve your health and safety programs, or your health and safety problems, but to have conversations about how to integrate those responsibilities into the organization's process. So if an operation supervisor is responsible, accountable for an area of the organization, and area of the actual facility, then maybe they should be accountable for ensuring that inspections are done in that area. That doesn't mean that they have to do them. But it's something where it becomes part of their scorecard or their accountability to make sure that all of the fire equipment in the area is inspected, and up to up to snuff, that it meets all of our housekeeping requirements, all of our other requirements for what it needs to look like in that area. So there's different ways to be able to do that. But asking these kind of key questions for yourself, what will get done? What resources are required to get the plan done? Who will be responsible for what and when? How will the results be evaluated? How will the actions be integrated into the business process will really help your objectives and plans not only get much clearer, but then be able to have that focus to be able to deliver the results that you the hard work you put on the front end allows you to get that result at the end. So a different way to be able to look at this is to think it through the smart system. Smart system is for objectives. And plans are really just a very kind of simple acronym to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. So if we're writing our objectives and plans to make sure they have all five of these elements, it will make sure that it allows us to be able to be successful at the end of the day, and drive through the requirements that we may need to be able to be successful in our health and safety change. 

Dylan Short  00:28:43 

So gone through the first four and now the the cert for the first three of four. And then we're going to talk a little bit about the management review. So Management Review is an area of great opportunity for many organizations, because our health and safety programs, many times, especially regulatory based programs, and even sometimes with our core programs, the responsibility for it is really left in the health and safety department or with the health and safety team. You can be a team of one. Now you can be a team of many, but doesn't actually advance outside of that in an ISO world. There are requirements for something called a management review. Top management, remember, we talked about them earlier, those are the people who are in charge of the organization, President CEO, CFO, COO those kinds of individuals, it could be the owner in some of our smaller organizations, but top management shall review the organization's OHS management system at Planned intervals to ensure that it's continuing and continuing suitability, adequacy and effectiveness. What that means is top management will make sure that at least once a year, that you're looking as an organization at what is The managing OHS management system doing? Is it suitable? Is it adequate? Is it doing what we expect? So it works through all of those kinds of things. So, again, our third and final poll question for you today. How would you describe your OHS continual improvement in your organization? So continual improvements can be a number of different things. But the answer number one is there's no formal continual improvement process. Number two, our investigation process links to our continual improvement. So many times we have it coming as recommendations out of an investigation. Number three, the OHS department leads continual improvement plans. Number four, management conducts independent review of the OHS system, leading to continual improvement plans that last one doesn't necessarily mean that just because they conduct that they're actually doing things like auditing, it could be that they're the ones who are instructing others to be able to do that. But the results come back to them to be able to figure out what continual improvement plans look like from there. So our results looks like in the lead here is the Health and Safety Department leads continual improvement plans, which is you know, positive, because you have a plan in place, which is really good. Looks like a few have management lead, that that's not unusual, because getting management's time and attention on this can be a difficult, but no formal and continual improvement process in place is a great opportunity for you as an organization to be able to figure out how to advance your safety program, and how to really be able to get things moving forward. And the investigations, linking to continual improvement is a really good place for those without a formal continuous improvement process to start. But it's it's an area where, you know, we're looking to be able to expand that. So thank you very much for your responses there. So, outside of that, when we talk about management review and continual improvement, from your point of view, what's the purpose of a management review. So in the ISO world, it's mandated, it's something that is a requirements, but it's not a requirement. Under our record various regulatory regimes, you know, there isn't a place in the country that says management must have a continual improvement or a management review of the health and safety system. So the purpose of it really is a number of different things. From our point of view, it's to independently evaluate the health and safety system from the customer's viewpoint. One of the harder things to do and myself as individual who is held a number of different safety roles from a coordinator up to a VP level, sometimes the safety system looks great from my desk, but it's not working really well, for my customer. It's not matching together, sometimes there's too much paperwork that has to be done. I'm sure none of us have heard that complaint before. But sometimes just the process doesn't make sense to somebody who isn't a health and safety practitioner, somebody who practices and works in the health and safety world all day, every day. So understanding and evaluating what is it that it's supposed to look like, but it's also a verify or not verify, process with practice. So many times one of the challenges we have is we'll have written processes, we have certain expectations, things like, you know, in the event of a catastrophic injury at an event, that the scene has to be frozen and not disturbed until the regulator has given us leave to be able to do that. That doesn't always happen. And sometimes it doesn't always happen because individuals who are involved don't understand all of their responsibilities. So it goes through and really looks at and says not only do we look at the system, to say, Hey, does that is that working for us? But are we following through? Or is the Health and Safety Committee doing the things they need to? Are the health and safety team doing the things they need to? Are we doing things like delivering information in a timely basis and making sure that we're getting back to and closing out gaps where areas of questions have come up. But it also allows us to identify gaps or blind spots in the health and safety system? When you're not the owner of the the person who's running the system all day every day, and you're an outsider, sometimes it's easy to come in and say, why are we doing this or why aren't we doing this? So it allows us to be able to to find areas when you have the top management have your leadership involved, to understand what does that actually look like at the end of the day, it's a couple of things to be able to remember is the big one is improvement steps that come from a management review are always easier to resource. So remember a couple of minutes ago under objectives and plans, we talked about, that we're always have to go back and ask the question from somebody, can we get resources for this, sometimes it's money. Sometimes it's time, sometimes it's you have individuals seconded into into a role. But if the management view, if your boss or the president of the organization says this is important, it becomes a lot easier to be able to say, well, if it's important, then they're going to also assign resources to be able to make sure that we address these kinds of things. So a couple of other things to be able to think about. question we always get is, How do I get started? What's the first thing I do if I don't have a strong continual improvement program, or if I want to advance this, beyond just the health and safety department, we can ask, do things like audit the joint health and safety committee actions, those are quite, you know, easy for us to be able to identify to understand, because the regulations say what a committee has to do, they have to do inspections, they have to have meetings, they have to be able to make recommendations, they have to follow through on recommendations, they have to receive training a whole bunch of different things. So there's, there's a finite list of things to do. But we can create an audit for that. And we can send it to manage it for feedback. Think of it like a scorecard for the health and safety committee. And if you have multiple committees even more valuable, because then you can start to be able to learn from each other about what are some areas of strength? What are areas of weakness and be able to help match those going forward. You can go through and also ask for, sorry about that ask for a review of OHS projects recently completed. So remember, again, when we talked about under objectives and plans that making sure that we not only deliver, but then we also need to close out at the end of a project. If we put a new inspection process in place, if we put a new training program in place? Did we actually take the time for y'all to review? Did we all to see did it go? Well? Did it go to and do the things that we expected it to do? While asking for a review from management? Our customer? To be able to say how did it go? What went well? What didn't go? Well? What should be done differently in the future? Some good, you know, dive in questions to be able to help learn and understand what does that look like. Remember, if you're just getting started, so a number of you talked about how you have either No, no program in place for continual improvement, or your continual improvement is driven out of your investigation program, you're going to start doing this outside of those to keep it simple. This is not something that doing audits, doing reviews, doing assessments is not something that everybody has the skills to do. So you may need to teach some of the people that you're engaging about what does that look like? And how to how does it come together to make sure that they have all the necessary tools to be able to complete it? 

Dylan Short  00:38:22 

If you're looking for ideas, maybe you should go to your customer and ask them, what are the areas of continual improvement we should focus on? And if so why should we focus on it? And where does that come from? So it's a bit of a feeling a little vulnerable at times, maybe when we ask that as a question, but it is going to our customer. And it's why many suppliers do customer service and surveys, where they ask during your last transaction? How did you feel about it? So maybe we should be asking our customer the operation? What is important to them? And how are we doing things? Well, what are areas of improvement that we can look at. So that's kind of a real whirlwind. I know I've taken 40 minutes of your time so far to be able to talk about learning from ISO 45001 to advance your safety program. By understanding the context, the organization, what work we do, what are areas of importance from our workers point of view, by understanding hazards in our organization and applying risk management principles to that identifying hazards or where harm can happen, and assessing the risk related to that and making sure that we have the right controls in place by setting objectives and plans that are, you know, SMART goals that make sure that they are focused on what the organization needs and not what we actually need. And making sure that we allow ourselves to be able to move forward and some of that, again, engaging your health and safety committee or committee members health and safety representative and asking them some of these questions as well. And then again, At the end, bringing it all full circle around to be able to engage management, your operations leaders, various other individuals and a top management role about what's working well, how do we assess because anything that comes out of a management review, that's seen as a gap can automatically fit into our objectives and plans for moving forward. So that allows us to be able to look at an understanding from ISO 45001 context, not everybody has the ability to be able to be certified to ISO 45,001. There's only approximately 400 organizations in all of Canada that have ISO 45001 certification. So a relatively low number, it's growing but still a relatively low number, but allows us to be able to understand what does this look like? How can we move that forward? How do we move move through that conversation? So with that, I will move on to the next portion of our conversation, then a little quick update about ISO 45001. And kind of where is it at today? So a couple of things. As you likely know, ISO 45001, was published in 2018, I was privileged enough to be a member of the Canadian mirror committee for that as process. It was a four and a half year process of developing the language developing the document the all of the requirements. From the ground up, there was approximately 300 different seed documents that were collected from around the world, was really fantastic learning because we had to engage with 75 other countries around the world, representatives from those countries to be able to work through all of that. Since then, there has been two amendments, they both happened this year and February 2024. This wasn't actually just for ISO 45001. But for all of the key management or Keystone management system standards, ISO 9001 14,001 18,001, those kinds of things, there was two technical amendments that were added 4.1. These are both notes, the organization shall determine whether climate change is a relevant issue. And number two is relevant. Interested parties can have requirements related to climate change. So it doesn't change, I don't think substantively the overall organization component. But ISO made the decision to add these two areas as notes into all of the Keystone management system standards, ISO 45001 being one of them, because climate change is a priority for them to be able to address at a low high level. Since 2018, there's actually been a whole lot of work that's actually happened. There's been four different guidelines that have been published since then. So in 2003, ISO 45002, which is the guidelines for implementing ISO 45001 was published. So the original document was intended to be something that any organization could take and be able to put into place. But it was quickly realized. And a working group was formed about a year after the publication of ISO 45001, which then got delayed because of a number of the COVID related issues, to be able to help provide guidelines on how to implement and really what guidelines and how to implement does is provides some clarification around expectations around things like setting, setting objectives or the context of the organization. So adding a lot of definitions around the ISO 45003 guidelines for psychosocial risks was published in 2021. The C document for that was actually CSA standard on CSA B and Q standard. Zed 1003, which is the psychological health and safety standard for Canada. And this was something that was that was used to be able to help push a more guidelines around addressing and dealing with psychosocial risks. It's a really interesting guideline to be able to help the organizations around the world to be able to continue to evolve to go from just what risk is, you know, in a How can somebody physically be hurt, but including risk and a cycle social area as well. The most recent publication, ISO forethought 45004 guidelines on performance evaluation I could add to this list because it was published about four weeks ago. That performance evaluation is really the guidelines to be able to say how are areas in the organization? What are areas that we can manage, that allows us to be able to look at the performance of the health and safety system. So it provides guidelines on how to identify performance metrics. What are areas to measure I want to be able to move through these kinds of things and manage that to last one published in 2023 is ISO 45006 guidelines for workplaces managing infectious diseases, that actually comes out of a, a work paper that was originally done that was about managing COVID-19. But it was then taken, excuse me out of a COVID-19 context, and providing guidelines for workplaces managing infectious diseases. Gentleman who is a part of the Canadian committee, Troy winters was actually the the working group lead on this. And it has a very heavy kind of Canadian influence on it around understanding about managing, identifying the hazards, managing the risk, making sure that there's multiple layers of protection, and making sure that you're engaging workers in the conversation to figure out what does that look like? And how does that move ahead. So these are all publications that are all published under ISO 45001 as the parents document. And these guidelines all support the use of ISO 45001. But you do not have to be ISO certified to still learn from some of these guidelines on areas of upgrade or performance in your organization. 

Dylan Short  00:46:27 

Finally, around here under ISO 45001, it is starting its first revision. So a version one document that was published in 2013 2018. It was good, but it has a lot of things to be able to do. So working group six, which is a working group of the conduct of the global Technical Committee, is going to start work on July 2024. I'm fortunate enough to be one of the three Canadian representatives who's going to be working on the global working group, we have to be able to go through and address the approximately 1500 comments that are in place that were left over from the first development of ISO 45,001. There's something called annex SL annex SL is the standardized terminology and structure for all management system standards at ISO. So we have to align to an updated annex SL that as like many standards continue to develop to address these kinds of things. So it's more of a procedural component. But it does things like you will see some changes around terminology. And SSL used to be very prescriptive on how terminology was used. There's been some evolution and some of that conversation. So we're going to have a little more latitude around some of the terms that we are using and how we're actually going to be able to use terminology and adjust some of that, then we're also going to have to address feedback. So one of the the areas of feedback we receive is organizations going through certification processes that provide feedback, like, what's the difference between a clause that says you have to account for X, versus you have to take into consideration X? And that's something that we have to figure out. Is there a difference between those two terms, do sets of terms? Or do we standardize that across the document? One of the challenges is, is these kinds of documents are developed in teams and the teams that come together, smoosh it all together and try to make it all make sense as it works through a document. But being under a constrained timeline to be able to develop all these kinds of things it makes for for some challenges at times to be able to keep our language consistent. So there's going to be some language consistencies. There's also feedback around things like well, when you said this, is that this what you made? Or is this what you meant? So it's working through and understanding from organizations being certified from certifying organizations and their auditors, from other interested parties who are saying that we would like this area to be stronger or this area to be to be less strenuous? We need to make sure that you know other interested parties have a greater standing or lesser standing or some of the other comments. So it is a large undertaking. It is a project that is expected to take about two years, they're able to work through and have a lot of conversations. Basically, we're going to have four to five week long meetings for two years, where we have meetings for approximately three hours each day to be able to talk about things at a global level. But beyond that, each of us are going to be assigned various work activity groups to be able to be engaged in and all of that work starts July 2024. So it's going to be an interesting process. And and one that I hope to be able to talk to many of you about again in the future. So that is our overall updates about not only advancing your health and safety program by learning from ISO 45,001, but also allowing you to be able to have a kind of an understanding about where we are in the world of ISO 45,001. It's an area that I can talk about on a very long basis for for many things. But now I think it's time to, to turn things over to Mallory, because in case any of you maybe had some questions, 

Mallory Hendry  00:50:34 

Yes, thank you. We do have a few questions here. For you, Dylan, one of our participants is wondering they work in the security field, they're trying to grow their health and safety knowledge. But they're finding some supervisors and managers are extremely difficult to get them to understand the guard needs. So how can I so help break down those barriers? 

Dylan Short  00:50:57 

Well, welcome to the health and safety profession. That's always a fun thing. And you'll talk to many of your colleagues, as you expand through the profession to understand that difficult individuals and difficult conversations come with the territory. So really, I guess what I would say is, is helping to understand the context of their conversation. So understanding when somebody is being difficult, most people, not everybody, but most people are not difficult just to be difficult. We all have a few of those friends who are difficult just to be difficult. But in this case, these are people you have to work with, really spend the time to be able to work through and ask the questions about what is it that they have a challenge with? Is there a particular part of the program? Is there a particular part of the system? What I find in my work is many times where resistance happens is when people don't understand the why. Why are we doing this? You know, you tell me I have to do these kinds of things. But why this doesn't make any sense. So sometimes it's a regulatory requirement. Sometimes it's an organizational requirements, sometimes just sharing the key component to be able to say, you know, we're doing this because we want to make sure that people go home at, well safe at the end of the day. And here's our experience where it went didn't go well. So that's something for you know, for you to be able to work through, it takes time, which is always a challenge is carving out the time to be able to have that as a conversation to understand from your customer's point of view, what is it that they have the challenge with? So hopefully that answers the video, your question. 

Mallory Hendry  00:52:35 

Thank you, Dylan. And this other question is about record keeping. So what is the record keeping requirements for training inspections, audits, etc. And they're also wondering what would not be proper record keeping methods post it notes, excel on the appropriate methods on the other hand? 

Dylan Short  00:52:56 

So this is always a fun conversation. Everything ISO is about records and documents. So those are the two things, documents are things that are changeable and can evolve over time. If you think about your health and safety program, as you change various things, as you update it, that's a document, it's considered something that's living a record is something that is not changeable in an ISO context. So records would be things like a record of attendance, the group of individuals who attended a certain activity event, training, any of those kinds of things, it could be a copy of an inspection. Before the inspection, the inspection doc, that document is it is a document. But once it's been completed and been signed off, it becomes then a record of that inspection. So the requirement for that is really up to the organization unless you you know, having knowing that you have to take into account things like regulatory requirements. So if you have to be able to demonstrate for regulatory purposes, that a monthly inspection is being completed on a crane, and that the record retention requirement for that on a regulatory basis is two years, which it is in many jurisdictions, not all, but many, that allows you to be able to say, well, then I have to keep at least two years of that type of record. When it comes to things like you know, in training, again, it's going to depend on the context of what it is. So if I have to do you know, health and safety committee training in Ontario, that training expires after a period of time, therefore, I'm going to have to keep a record to make sure that I know that that hasn't expired for any period of time. That record again under ISO world is not mandated on what does that look like? So you can do that by keeping physical copies you can keep in our world today is getting a lot easier because we can keep digital copies. We can transpose that information into a spreadsheet or into A system that gives us alerts and those kinds of things. So there's lots of different options. But again, make sure that you know what your minimum requirements are, does your organization have to have or have rules around record retention. And then the last thing is, is under key circumstances, like critical injuries, fatalities and whatnot, make sure that you have conversations with your legal team, if you're, you know, if you're in a position where a regulatory prosecution, because many times you might have to be able to keep records of certain things for 710 years, to be able to deal with a regulatory prosecution. So there might be certain instances where additional recordkeeper and requirements need to be extended. 

Mallory Hendry  00:55:44 

Thank you another question. What HSMS system would you suggest for certification for a municipality? 

Dylan Short  00:55:52 

Great question. Well, there's not many to choose from, quite frankly. And it really depends on what your goals. So I'm obviously biased. I think ISO 45001 is awesome. But I will also tell you that ISO 45009 is not for everybody. So it really comes down to what's the need of your organization for certification. So if you are heading towards certification, or your you know, the organization's mandate, is to certify for that. The questions you want to ask is, what are the benefits that we're going to gain from having a health and safety management system that is certified and certified, meaning that we're having a third party audit being done that says we're meeting all of these requirements. So we work with all kinds of different clients that have some or ISO 45001 certified, some of them are certified to their own internal system. So publicly available information organizations like Toyota, Ford have their own internal management system. But that internal management system is actually audited by independent auditors, and certified to their requirements. So it could be that it could be anything in between, you know, many individuals here on this webinar today talked about earlier that they are course certified. So I am of the opinion that core is not a management system. But core is a really good step that if you don't have a management system in place, now that you have a program that you believe is robust core is a really good way that gives you that half step towards a management system, because it has a lot of great robust items. Like we have a list of items that we have to address in our in our system, that all has to be independently verified. We have internal and external audits on a periodic basis. And it mandates our record keeping that we talked about earlier, and what that looks like. So there's a number of different ways to be able to do that. But it really does start with the key question that we work with our clients, if they ask the question is, what's the value going to be to the organization? And there's a number of tools that you can work through those kinds of things to answer that. But it really comes down to what are you going to get? Why are we doing it? Because, frankly, certifying is hard. 

Mallory Hendry  00:58:04 

And how can ISO 45001 be implemented with a hop, H O P lens slash approach? 

Dylan Short  00:58:13 

Ah, interesting. So hop, I guess is a would be part of the risk context in ISO 45001. Hop is fantastic, because it looks beyond just the person and make sure that it helps to structure the conversation, say, in a risk conversation in a failure mode conversation. What are the systems analysis that we need to look at beyond just the person? So hop is really helpful to be able to to understand where does that look like and I would, I would suggest adding hop into any organization's processes, whether you're going to be ISO 45001 or not, it's a really strong way to be able to help make sure that you're doing things like understanding work in a harm context that allows us to be able to, to not have to wait for injuries just to to be able to learn, but also adding hop style questions and processes into our investigation process to make sure that we're moving beyond the task and the person which is many of our investigations focus on that we're looking at processes and systems and organization responsibilities, and leadership responsibilities, too. So hop is an area that that you probably want to really focus on. Its you can spend a long time talking about the benefits of hoppers process. 

Mallory Hendry  00:59:36 

Hey, and I know we're close to time here. Do you want to take one more question Dylan? 

Dylan Short  00:59:41 

Sure, Absolutely. 

Mallory Hendry  00:59:43 

Okay, what is an appropriate method to determine competence when training an operator?  

Dylan Short  00:59:48 

Ah, it's a fun question. I'm also the past year of Zed 1001. So that is the Health and Safety Training standard per CSA and Determining competence can be a number of different things. But it really will, again, it's going to depend on the context of the training we're talking about. If we are doing something like women's training, providing a knowledge test, maybe a very good way of doing that competence assessment, but I would say providing a knowledge test for a skill based application, I'm gonna sound silly, but I wouldn't give somebody a knowledge test or a multiple choice question, to ask them how fast they can type, I would actually ask them to type and measure it. So maybe some of our skill base applications like driving, like operating equipment, like, you know, using various pieces of machinery, that our competency assessment needs to be in the field and actually, you know, seeing that the person knows what they're doing, and seeing how they actually apply the knowledge and skills that they may have learned in a classroom, out on the shop floor and are they able to do it successfully. That's really what competence is about. 

Mallory Hendry  01:00:57 

Okay, that is great. I know we're at the end of our time. I want to thank you so much, Dylan, I think we can all agree, thanks for sharing your insight, your expertise on this and everybody in the audience. Thank you so much for joining us and keep an eye out for other upcoming webinars. And please enjoy the rest of your day.