Practical Tips on How Employers Can Meet Their Joint Health and Safety Committee Obligations
In Ontario, employers must abide by the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) to ensure the safety of their workplace and workers. One legal requirement under OHSA that we often get questions about is an employer’s obligations around the Joint Health and Safety Committees (JHSC). Here are some practical tips for employers to meet these obligations.
How to build your Joint Health and Safety Committee?
The number of employees your workplace has will determine the size of your committee. For this blog, we will focus on workplaces that are over 20 employees but under 50 employees, indicating that your JHSC needs to be made up of two members. One worker member and one management member. The worker member must be selected by their fellow workers and is typically someone who is a good role model and has shown an interest in the health and safety of the workplace. The management member must be selected by the employer and should have similar interests. At least one of the members from each category must be certified, meaning they have completed mandatory certification training. The names and work locations of the members must also be posted at your workplace.
Post #MeToo we have more and more dialogue about sexual harassment and sexual assault. There has been significant discussion in the areas of what constitutes consent and the power imbalances that exist in the workplace. For those reasons, some employers prohibit intimate contact between employees. Employers take this stance, because they know they could be liable for the sexual misconduct of an employee, whether the misconduct was perpetrated against another employee, a client, or otherwise. 
