Circle of Care is committed to the prevention of workplace violence and harassment, and continues to strive to ensure our work environment is safe for all employees.
Our Joint Health and Safety Committee (JHSC) has determined that the hazard of workplace violence and harassment is ‘medium risk’ for our community employees, and as such, invites our employees to participate in an annual Workplace Violence and Risk Assessment. Our JHSC recently reviewed the risk assessment responses, which captured feedback from November 2023- March 2024, at our last meeting and we would like to share the risk assessment responses and our Action Plan with you.
Risk assessment results have been summarized here:
2024 risk assessment results
Action Plan:
- Reviewing existing policies, procedures and programs to strengthen language that violence and harassment is not tolerated – and that any employee who is at risk of violence or harassment in a client setting should remove themselves from the situation and report the information to the office
- Reviewing existing e-learning content and adding in additional information about how to handle clients who are acting inappropriately by using personal language
- Continuing our annual workplace violence and harassment communication and training campaign
- Sending out regular reminders to encourage employees to report incidents of workplace violence and harassment – it is important to report as we can often escalate incidents internally, and we have support from HCCSS as thy also have a zero-tolerance policy for violence and harassment
- Encouraging CSSs to continue adding the topic of Workplace Violence and Harassment at team meetings
- Sending reminders to clients and caregivers via our newsletter that Circle of Care is dedicated to promoting the health and safety of employees – and as such violence and harassment will not be tolerated
- Continued investigation and tracking all reported incidents of workplace violence and harassment, including client to worker, worker to work and community violence