Congratulations. As a supervisor, your employer has shown
great confidence in you by hiring or promoting you into a supervisory role
your company is entrusting you with its most important asset its employees.
Employees are the lifeline of any business. Keeping them healthy and safe
is a shared responsibility among the employer, supervisors and workers themselves.
This concept is known as the Internal Responsibility System under the
Occupational Health and Safety Act also known as the OHSA.
As a supervisor you're the link between management and day-to-day operations.
While you'll manage many relationships in the workplace, expectations may be different
for each and every one. Your role is vital and people expect a lot of you.
To ensure you're a champion of healthy and safe workers as expected under the OHSA,
it's important to understand your duties and responsibilities. Although you're a
supervisor, you're considered a worker too. Which means you have the same duties
and rights as a worker. But as a supervisor the Act requires you perform
additional and very specific duties as well.
As a supervisor you must inform workers about the hazards and dangers in the workplace,
train workers to work in a healthy and safe manner,
make sure workers follow the law and workplace health and safety policies and procedures,
Ensure workers wear protective devices or required clothing and correctly use equipment
and take every reasonable precaution to protect workers from being hurt or getting a work-related illness.
Familiarizing yourself with the Act and understanding
your roles and responsibilities are both important to maintaining a safe workplace.
But it also takes a wide variety of additional skills, experience
and personal attributes to interact with and motivate staff effectively.
The most successful leaders combine their tech knowledge with a robust set of interpersonal and social skills.
professional competencies such as
resourcefulness, flexibility, enthusiasm, time management and the ability to delegate are also key.
This combination of skills helps the supervisor relate to,
influence and motivate staff.
Effective communication and active listening are essential to create an environment that is healthy safe and productive
It's these skills that will help you build the trust and confidence necessary
to create an environment where workers are comfortable expressing their health and safety concerns.
Well-tuned communication skills also help with
effectively training workers, especially new ones so they know what's expected of them.
Listening to your workers and asking key questions will help you
understand how work is being done and whether or not changes need to be made.
What is correcting unsafe behavior or acknowledging a job done well and safely,
strong communication skills are incredibly valuable.
Being a supportive supervisor is also important. Sometimes members of your team may be dealing with
issues you know little about. Work-related stress and mental health
issues can wreak havoc on a workers ability to get their work done.
Recognizing an employee who's struggling for whatever reason will help you help them.
We highly recommend supervisors are trained in mental health first aid.
Just as you use first aid to address a physical injury, mental health first aid
equip supervisors with the ability to offer front life support in the workplace.
Highly engaged and effective supervisors make great organizations better.
The secret to a successful organization is selecting the right
people for the right positions and giving them the tools, training and
support they need to do their job well. There are many reasons why your employer
chose you to lead your team. I've only touched on a few attributes you can rely
on as you build a culture of safety in your workplace.
If you feel there are other skills you could add to your toolkit don't hesitate to ask your
employer for additional training. Tell them you want to be the best that you can be.
I'm Janet Bewers and this has been your Health and Safety Moment
from Workplace Safety & Prevention Services
For more information visit WSPS.CA