while i cant speak to Ontario practices with MOL.
my experience here in nova scotia as a new business, the Dept of labor and advanced education (NS's equivalent to MOL) is not about crushing new business more about making sure I as the business owner has taken all available steps to mitigate risk and liability through adequate and proper training for employees. whether its chainsaw training or lift training or site security (ensuring customers or pedestrians don't enter the drop zone) its a positive for your business profile and shows I have done what I can to prevent an incident from occurring. training courses for employees are a tax write off to begin with and should always be factored into your business model.
as to what I have in place as a business I use the TCIA training programs for tree work specific stuff in combination with on the job training, I also have a company safety policy in place and employees are expected to follow it. employees are not allowed use of equipment they have not been properly trained and signed off on. we also do a lot of trainingand practice of various things in the down time between jobs I/we do have tailgate policy in place for discussions after a site walk through has been completed and a safety briefing checklist/form is gone over. when working on/beside a road part of my legal requirements from the municipality is a road disruption permit which requires traffic control in place so that limits risk to pedestrians as I hire a traffic control company for the duration of the job and they take on that responsibility. it is way overkill for the region given most of the guys around this neck of the woods don't even bother with ppe let alone any form of formal training, but if god forbid something does happen I can honestly say I took every forseeable precaution to prevent it. as a business owner I can only do so much but this business is a dangerous one as we all know too well, if your worried about going bankrupt due to an accident then something is wrong, as that's what insurance is for both WCB (wsib in ont) for your employees and Liability for everyone else.
while I may not be slamming away at 6 days a week 12 hours a day doing low balled residential work, I get a good chunk of high end business and huge jobs because of the extensive safety culture I promote within my employees and the larger clients see us putting it into practice on every jobsite. a tip that might help you is to reach out too MOL and set up a meeting discuss with them your concerns ask for their advice and input with regard to safety and risk mitigation from your end, it may seem counter intuitive to you but as an employer you gain some respect by being proactive with the MOL trying to put a plan in place with their input before an accident happens.
that's just my two sense and ramblings.
while i cant speak to Ontario practices with MOL.
my experience here in nova scotia as a new business, the Dept of labor and advanced education (NS's equivalent to MOL) is not about crushing new business more about making sure I as the business owner has taken all available steps to mitigate risk and liability through adequate and proper training for employees. whether its chainsaw training or lift training or site security (ensuring customers or pedestrians don't enter the drop zone) its a positive for your business profile and shows I have done what I can to prevent an incident from occurring. training courses for employees are a tax write off to begin with and should always be factored into your business model.
as to what I have in place as a business I use the TCIA training programs for tree work specific stuff in combination with on the job training, I also have a company safety policy in place and employees are expected to follow it. employees are not allowed use of equipment they have not been properly trained and signed off on. we also do a lot of trainingand practice of various things in the down time between jobs I/we do have tailgate policy in place for discussions after a site walk through has been completed and a safety briefing checklist/form is gone over. when working on/beside a road part of my legal requirements from the municipality is a road disruption permit which requires traffic control in place so that limits risk to pedestrians as I hire a traffic control company for the duration of the job and they take on that responsibility. it is way overkill for the region given most of the guys around this neck of the woods don't even bother with ppe let alone any form of formal training, but if god forbid something does happen I can honestly say I took every forseeable precaution to prevent it. as a business owner I can only do so much but this business is a dangerous one as we all know too well, if your worried about going bankrupt due to an accident then something is wrong, as that's what insurance is for both WCB (wsib in ont) for your employees and Liability for everyone else.
while I may not be slamming away at 6 days a week 12 hours a day doing low balled residential work, I get a good chunk of high end business and huge jobs because of the extensive safety culture I promote within my employees and the larger clients see us putting it into practice on every jobsite. a tip that might help you is to reach out too MOL and set up a meeting discuss with them your concerns ask for their advice and input with regard to safety and risk mitigation from your end, it may seem counter intuitive to you but as an employer you gain some respect by being proactive with the MOL trying to put a plan in place with their input before an accident happens.
that's just my two sense and ramblings.
Hey NScoyote, thanks for the reply! I can honestly say safety was our number one concern always, and although I do worry very much so about liability, I had been curbing those worries by implementing excellent safety protocols, and like you said, we had some higher end clients because of it (the city, school boards, CN, the utility), they all love seeing a safe secured job site filled with employees who have the proper PPE and are taking work and safety seriously.
My worries came from my contact at Workplace Safety North (the WSIB group I belonged to), who let me know that if their is an accident, you are guilty until proven innocent in the eyes of the MOL, and they will crucify you. I then attended seminars for small businesses put on by WSIB, and to me it just seemed they expected so much overkill, I think all of us as a group were miffed. For example, for wood chipper training:
Train someone on that woodchipper, have them read the owners manual, document and sign off, then evaluate and sign off (which is all fair and other than reading the manual, we'd been doing that). Where it got funny was retraining, re-evaluating, resigning off, and basically if something happened we'd still be held responsible). You're right we did have WSIB and 5 million in liability ( required by the local utility). I guess WSIB was just deliberately trying to scare us?
I did have a competitor who called the MOL on me when he saw me doing hydro work (he'd had he contract for years and lost it, there were some very hard feelings involved). MOL came out and gave us an A+ report (had hired a traffic control company for traffic, pulled road permit as it was over a busy road, secured sight, did work in an extremely safe manner). He'd said he was very impressed.
I think even hearing your view of things, with tailboards, training and sign offs, and that general attitude of safety, if you can honestly say and prove you did everything you could to prevent an accident, your insurance should cover you at the very least if some freak accident occurred. I was also told by someone you'd be sued personally if anything happened. Possible that I am just paranoid... but after working for bigger companies in other dangerous fields I realized we had much more in depth safety training then them. Also you're right safety training for employees is a write off and just part of doing good business.
On your advice I will contact the man from the MOL who gave me my review, and get his take on the whole thing.
Thank you so much for the in depth detailed response, it was definitely needed. Congratulations on running such a clean and safe operation, I'll be hopeing to emulate it upon reopening.
Thanks again,
Ryan
