Employers can't be there all the time, but a 'certain level' of supervision required: WorkSafeBC
When Glenn Baker, manager of maintenance and service at State Water Corporation in New South Wales, Australia, started with his company, employees weren’t even reporting OHS incidents.
“The difficulty with having guys in remote places is you need to have faith in what they’re doing, you need to know you can rely on them to do the right thing,” he said. “Unfortunately that wasn’t always the case.”
In fact, they often tried to cover incidents up. In one example, the company had a group of workers at a small dam. The workers knowingly disconnected a line of buoys which was there to keep boats from getting too close to a spillway of the dam.
They went over the spillway and sunk the boat.
“(They were) lucky to have lived,” he said. “The only reason that they reported it, the only way that I found out is that I had to get the boat out of the bottom. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been reported. It’s those sort of practices. I’m sure there are other things that took place that we didn’t know about.”
The company had 16 loss-time injuries in two years.
“Which, given the training and the background I had, was just not acceptable,” said Barker.
So State Water embarked on a stringent, regimented program to improve the culture. The program included a lot of reinforcement and a lot of training.
The company established a system of morning “tool box” meetings where teams would talk in the morning so they knew what everyone on the team was doing during the day and where they should be.
State Water established a system where people would know what other workers would be doing.
The company battled literacy issues, going as far as to read job stipulations to workers and have them repeat them back so they understood.
And there are repercussions for not following safety orders.
“For the ones who did not want to comply, there was disciplinary actions that were implemented. Fortunately that wasn’t needed all that often,” said Baker.
Recently the company went for nearly one million injury-free person hours, compared to having an average of 1.5 loss-time injuries per month before.
‘Certain level’ of supervision required
In British Columbia, WorkSafeBC expects employers to do a risk assessment of what they could be faced with in terms of hazards including the type of work and risk assessment in the location they’re working in, said Bruce Clarke, regional prevention manager, WorkSafeBC.
“We would also expect a certain level of supervision,” he said. “We recognize employers can’t be there all the time but we would still expect an employer to do a certain amount of supervision to the degree that they’re comfortable that their employees are following the plan.”
There are a lot of the hazards in rural B.C., where Clarke is based, including insects and wildlife. Remote employees have to be aware of protecting themselves from those hazards.
“So we would expect that appropriate training... would be done around those hazards,” he said. “Those are hazards that are commonplace, the environment conditions, and that are common to all industries.”
Remote crews in areas Clarke works in will have pre-season meetings and will go through a lot of the hazards, make sure appropriate people have first aid training and ensure crews get bear awareness training.
WorkSafeBC also expects someone working remotely would have means to call for help via a radio or satellite phone.
Defining a ‘remote worker’
Not all remote workforces are as obvious as those working far off in the woods.
Sandro Perruzza, chief of client services at Workplace Safety and Prevention Services (WSPS) in Ontario, said workplaces have to define for themselves what a remote worker is.
It’s not just when people are working in fields and on location. A worker in a very large workplace who is off in a building by herself should still be considered remote and should have special precautions taken for her, he said.
Peruzza worked at a pharmaceutical company prior to joining WSPS. In that environment, some of the labs were a remote workplace. If an employee was running an experiment for 10 hours then they would be alone in a lab after colleagues left at the end of an eight-hour workday.
“You’re dealing with chemicals, biological hazards. What if there’s an accident that happens and the person is overcome with fumes?” he said.
So Perruzza’s company equipped employees with sensors — if an employee fell the sensor would go off and trigger medical attention.
It’s important to be people-focused, not compliance-focused, he said.
“You work with employees to understand what the hazards are and then you find a way to protect them — you don’t talk about the cost, you don’t talk about the requirements of law,” he said. “This is the right thing to do. 'You’re our most valuable asset and we want to protect you.'”
“The difficulty with having guys in remote places is you need to have faith in what they’re doing, you need to know you can rely on them to do the right thing,” he said. “Unfortunately that wasn’t always the case.”
In fact, they often tried to cover incidents up. In one example, the company had a group of workers at a small dam. The workers knowingly disconnected a line of buoys which was there to keep boats from getting too close to a spillway of the dam.
They went over the spillway and sunk the boat.
“(They were) lucky to have lived,” he said. “The only reason that they reported it, the only way that I found out is that I had to get the boat out of the bottom. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been reported. It’s those sort of practices. I’m sure there are other things that took place that we didn’t know about.”
The company had 16 loss-time injuries in two years.
“Which, given the training and the background I had, was just not acceptable,” said Barker.
So State Water embarked on a stringent, regimented program to improve the culture. The program included a lot of reinforcement and a lot of training.
The company established a system of morning “tool box” meetings where teams would talk in the morning so they knew what everyone on the team was doing during the day and where they should be.
State Water established a system where people would know what other workers would be doing.
The company battled literacy issues, going as far as to read job stipulations to workers and have them repeat them back so they understood.
And there are repercussions for not following safety orders.
“For the ones who did not want to comply, there was disciplinary actions that were implemented. Fortunately that wasn’t needed all that often,” said Baker.
Recently the company went for nearly one million injury-free person hours, compared to having an average of 1.5 loss-time injuries per month before.
‘Certain level’ of supervision required
In British Columbia, WorkSafeBC expects employers to do a risk assessment of what they could be faced with in terms of hazards including the type of work and risk assessment in the location they’re working in, said Bruce Clarke, regional prevention manager, WorkSafeBC.
“We would also expect a certain level of supervision,” he said. “We recognize employers can’t be there all the time but we would still expect an employer to do a certain amount of supervision to the degree that they’re comfortable that their employees are following the plan.”
There are a lot of the hazards in rural B.C., where Clarke is based, including insects and wildlife. Remote employees have to be aware of protecting themselves from those hazards.
“So we would expect that appropriate training... would be done around those hazards,” he said. “Those are hazards that are commonplace, the environment conditions, and that are common to all industries.”
Remote crews in areas Clarke works in will have pre-season meetings and will go through a lot of the hazards, make sure appropriate people have first aid training and ensure crews get bear awareness training.
WorkSafeBC also expects someone working remotely would have means to call for help via a radio or satellite phone.
Defining a ‘remote worker’
Not all remote workforces are as obvious as those working far off in the woods.
Sandro Perruzza, chief of client services at Workplace Safety and Prevention Services (WSPS) in Ontario, said workplaces have to define for themselves what a remote worker is.
It’s not just when people are working in fields and on location. A worker in a very large workplace who is off in a building by herself should still be considered remote and should have special precautions taken for her, he said.
Peruzza worked at a pharmaceutical company prior to joining WSPS. In that environment, some of the labs were a remote workplace. If an employee was running an experiment for 10 hours then they would be alone in a lab after colleagues left at the end of an eight-hour workday.
“You’re dealing with chemicals, biological hazards. What if there’s an accident that happens and the person is overcome with fumes?” he said.
So Perruzza’s company equipped employees with sensors — if an employee fell the sensor would go off and trigger medical attention.
It’s important to be people-focused, not compliance-focused, he said.
“You work with employees to understand what the hazards are and then you find a way to protect them — you don’t talk about the cost, you don’t talk about the requirements of law,” he said. “This is the right thing to do. 'You’re our most valuable asset and we want to protect you.'”
