Douglas College
PA-15: Workplace Health and Safety

Douglas College's current OHSMS provides tools to help improve health, safety and environmental performances on campus. As per the Workers Compensation Act, the College has established a Health and Safety Policy that has been created and endorsed by our Senior Leadership Team. Further, our formalized OHS Program was established circa 1995 and, from that time, continually builds and improves on that foundation.

Resources include policies, procedures, formalized and/or supplemental documents to help create an easier implementation of health and safety strategies, processes and guidelines. We also have various file management systems in place on SharePoint to provide open access to members of the College employee community for relevant OHSMS component material, to hold records, and help track and review data.

We regularly collaborate with key stakeholders such as:
- College Employees,
- Department and Program Groups,
- Supervisors, Managers, Responsible Administrators,
- Human Resources,
- Senior Leadership,
- Joint Occupational Health & Safety Committees,
- Community Partners such as Local and Regional Police, Fire Departments Municipalities and the Insurance Corporation of BC, and
- Other post-secondary institutions across British Columbia.

Other key components of the College's OHSMS include:
- Documentation identifying the formal OHS program, as well as safe work procedures, first aid and emergency protocols, ergonomic self-assessment checklists, incident reporting and investigation, risk assessments, WHMIS, transportation of dangerous goods, working alone/in isolation, fall protection, confined spaces, communicable disease prevention/response, contractor safety, indoor air quality, hot work management, violence prevention/response, etc.
- Engaged and collaborative Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committees (four in total) consisting of 10+ members each Comprehensive emergency management program that includes protocols and drills for subjects such as business continuity management, earthquake, emergency evacuation, emergency notifications, emergency operations centre (EOC), lost child, violent intruder, etc.
- Online forms and templates, providing user groups with necessary policies, procedures, safety guidelines, templates and requests
- New employee occupational health & safety/job specific safety orienting
‘Personal safety’ planning for the campus community as well as programs like ‘Safer Walk’
- Contractor/visitor orientations and workplace/site inspections
- Planning (with the Joint Committees) and initiating health & safety training and events for the College community (from internal and external training/education providers)
- Work with MCO (Marketing and Communications Office) to communicate and promote occupational health & safety topics

Douglas College uses information from the WSBC scorecard. They tabulate the scores based on the salary reported to them combined with the recordable incidents that are also reported to them.

All 10 incidents were a result of medical aid beyond first aid (e.g.,needing the attention of a health care professional, whether that be a nurse, doctor, or paramedic).