New Ontario Sexual Harassment Legislation Effective Sep 8, 2016

March 22, 2016, by HR à la carte | Work Environment and Policies

As you may have heard Bill 132, Sexual Violence and Harassment Action Plan Act, recently received Royal Assent and will be effective in Ontario as of September 8, 2016.  The Act makes changes to the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act to include workplace sexual harassment as a safety issue.

We are working on revising our Workplace Discrimination, Violence and Harassment and Policy to include the new aspects that Bill 132 introduced, such as:

• Changing the definition of workplace harassment, to include workplace sexual harassment and its definition
• Involvement of Joint Health & Safety Committees in developing programs and procedures to address
• Measures and procedures for workers to report incidents of workplace harassment to a person other than the employer/supervisor, if the employer/supervisor is the alleged harasser
• Privacy measures for the investigation itself
• New reporting requirements once the investigation is complete to both the complainant and the alleged harasser
• Allows a Ministry inspector to order an employer to have an investigation and report completed by impartial third-party, at the employer’s expense

Once completed we will upload the revised policy onto our website.  In the meantime, you can find out more information here.