Bill 14: Bullying and Harassment Overview and Compliance
Ever increasing attention is being paid to the problem of workplace bullying and harassment, its magnitude, and effects on individuals, groups and organizations.
In British Columbia WorkSafeBC’s Board of Directors has approved three Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) policies under Sections 115, 116, and 117 of the Workers Compensation Act, dealing with workplace bullying and harassment. These policies were developed to help prevent and address workplace bullying and harassment. These policies define bullying and harassment and explain the duties of employers, workers, and supervisors. These new regulations apply to the approximately 215,000 employers and 2.2 million workers currently served by WorkSafeBC.
Costs of bullying to organizations
Research has shown that targets as well as witnesses to workplace bullying suffer from behavioural, physical, psychological, economic and social affects, and organizations are faced with increasing absenteeism and turnover rates as well as decreasing levels of performance and productivity.
Some common factors that need to be considered when estimating the cost to the organization:
- Sickness absence
- Replacement costs incurred by employee turnover
- Reduced productivity/performance
- Knock on effects on witnesses or observers of bullying
- Premature retirement
- Grievance and complaints (significant under-estimation of reporting and investigation down-time)
- Litigation and compensation
- Organizational intervention
- Increased employee satisfaction, resulting in lower turnover, improved ability to cope with change, increased productivity, significant savings and knowledge retention
- Better name recognition, improved reputation and larger talent pool, resulting in reduced recruitment costs and more unsolicited applications
- Reduced absenteeism, injuries, accidents, disability and compensation costs, healthcare and life insurance costs, temporary employee training costs, property damage costs, fines and insurance premiums
- Increased staff skills and competencies.
Becoming Bill 14 Compliant: Lets Get Started
St. John Ambulance’s online training and compliance system is the perfect platform for employers to comply with Bill 14 new legislation that has broadened obligations with respect to workplace bullying and harassment. For employers St. John Ambulanceonline training will help you understand and prepare for your ongoing duties to prevent and address workplace bullying and harassment.
We have designed and developed a customized system is designed specifically to:
1) Educate;
2) Show transfer of knowledge;
3) Measure Understanding; and facilitate
4) Document Compliance
Our Bill 14: Bullying and Harassment compliance and learning solutions team are ready to help any size organization large or small to meet and exceed the requirements under the new legislation.
Why Partner with St. John Ambulance?
Have your own dedicated online bullying and harassment compliance centre. It will allow employees and the general public to see your organizations commitment to addressing bullying and harassment in the workplace.
Our online training is engaging and full of real scenarios that are used to reinforce the learning objectives of the training. Additional interactive exercises can be added to give workplace specific custom content and further enhance the learning experience and knowledge retention.
Because it is St. John Ambulance you will also have access to a catalogue of other course titles covering a broad spectrum of HR and OH&S training. Training that once again can be custom tailored to your organizations specific needs.
Easily support and manage all aspects of bullying and harassment training, distribution and knowledge verification of safe/respectful workplace policies and procedures.
It will also allow your organization to easily customize your policies and procedures into an online framework allowing for an efficient and effective way of distributing your policy and procedures and more importantly verify the knowledge and understanding of each and every employee.