Injuries and Disability Management
The best way to combat occupational injuries and the development of occupational disease is though the implementation of prevention focused initiatives. The financial costs endured by employers and the physical and mental anguish suffered by injured and ill workers can be avoided if sufficient measures are taken in advance by employers to prevent accidents and incidents before potentially dangerous or deadly accident scenarios have a chance to manifest themselves as real industrial accidents or incidents. Two of the primary drivers of occupational injury and illness in Canada remain a lack of understanding of many fundamental health and safety risks as well as non-compliant behavior reinforced by weak or ineffectual supervision.
The desire for cost containment by Canadians has also led this country’s worker’s compensation authorities into new territory administratively including a significant expansion of the ability of worker’s compensation boards to review the safety related performance of public and private employers. Worker’s compensation boards in Canada can now on the one hand act to reward compliant employers with rebates and other performance incentives while on the other act to punish the worst offenders with the threat of punitive rate increases, criminal prosecution or both. Since the recession of the early 1990's the focus of worker's compensation has changed from the provision of mere financial compensation such as regular payments made in lieu of lost earnings or potential lost earnings, to a focus on prevention and a provision of physical, mental and vocational rehabilitation services. Hence a focus on early and safe return to work systems that encourage workers to resume regular job activities is now elemental to the contemporary view of worker's compensation in Canada. In the cases of corporate occupational health and safety programs, the most commonly applied protected ground requiring a workplace accommodation strategy remains the issue of disability, although several recent accommodation cases have involved other grounds such as the above stated issues of religion, gender and ethnicity. The duty to accommodate is also the reason employers today must do more than simply investigate whether or not any existing job might be suitable for a disabled employee. Under the concept of the "duty to accommodate" issues such as business inconvenience, resentment or hostility from other co-workers, the operation of collective agreements and customer "preferences" cannot be considered at all. When a person with a disability needs preferential measures and other supports in order to continue their work the employer bears a express legal duty to provide such supports to the person with the disability. | There are only three limits to the duty to accommodate including cost, undue hardship and bona fide health and safety factors. Costs can be considered in an accommodation case only where such a cost is unreasonably high or "undue." A cost would be deemed to be unreasonable and hence undue if it were so high that it would seriously impact the continued survival of a business or would act to fundamentally alter the existing business or productivity model. Such costs must be quantifiable and can include costs such as capital and operating costs and the cost of re-structuring. Human rights law recognizes that different businesses have different financial circumstances. What may be an "undue cost" for a small business, may not be undue for a larger one. If the accommodation requires the business to fundamentally change what the business does, that may also be "undue". Health and Safety and factors must also be considered in any accommodation case as the goal of workplace accommdation is not to make the situation worse for a person subject to a disability by implementing a solution that in the end is counterproductive. The fact that legitimate health and safety requirements exist does not in itself preclude the need to accomodate. In many cases existing health and safety procedures and policies can be waived or modified, or replaced by alternative approaches that still provide effective health and safety protections to staff but equally fulfull the need to accommodate protected differences and needs.
Source of injury information used to compile the chart below: WSIB Ontario, 2010, Statistical Supplement. |
Disability Management
Knaack & Associates has the experience to assist your organization with the all of your workplace consequence and corporate disability management requirements. We can help your supervisory staff and management team master the often daunting challenges associated with implementing focused early intervention, WCB case management, legislated return to work and workplace reintegration procedures, as well as other similar corporate disability management and workplace acccomodation functions and programs.
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