By Christian Codrington, CHRP

In less than one month, employers and employees in BC will have to meet legal obligations to ensure their workplaces are effectively preventing or dealing with bullying and harassing behaviours.

Is your workplace ready?

WorkSafeBC has resources to help you prepare and today unveiled a toolkit, including a handbook, designed to prevent and address workplace bullying and harassment.  

At an hour-long event this morning, WorkSafeBC presented their recent work to the employer community at the Pan Pacific Hotel. The session, opened by Scott McCloy, director of Community Relations at Worksafe BC, involved a number of notable figures in BC’s employment landscape including Dr. Jennifer Newman, workplace psychologist, Jim Sinclair, president, BC Federation of Labour, and Roberta Ellis, senior vice-president, Corporate Services and Human Resources at WorkSafeBC.

The morning’s introduction of the new tools was an impactful way to draw attention to the upcoming implementation of new harassments policies. Effective November 1^st, employers must comply with a variety of duties ranging from developing policy statements and complaint procedures to deal with bullying behaviours to training their teams on how to recognize, respond to and deal with incidents in the workplace.

Bullying continues to have a significant impact on the workplace, including disengagement, high turnover and lower productivity. These resources from WorkSafeBC can help your organization implement good people practices before the November 1^st deadline.

Watch for additional support from BC HRMA in assisting you to meet the province’s goal of creating safe and respectful workplaces.

Christian Codrington, CHRP, is the senior manager of operations at BC HRMA. Christian earned his business undergraduate degree from Simon Fraser University, specializing in organizational behavior. He also has mediation and conflict resolution certificates from the Justice Institute of BC. ccodrington@bchrma.org