Clock Clock is ticking for getting COR™ certified in Ontario. Are you ready? In Ontario, COR™ has become a pre-requisite for many organizations such as Metrolinx, GTAA, TTC, Infrastructure Ontario, City of Brampton, City of Milton, and City of Toronto. That’s what started the buzz in the early part of 2016.
However, in 2017, the York Region made COR™ mandatory for bidding for any project in excess of $150,000. This added to the COR™ impetus, since the Small and Medium Sized companies started joining the race, which was not the case in early 2016. Today, COR™ certification has reached a stage where you just cannot remain registered anymore. The luxury of just remaining registered and bid for projects is soon vanishing. It’s time to take action.
CLICK HERE to check the latest COR™ requirements of various organizations published by the IHSA.
Manage the risks for the health and safety of their workers. Companies in Ontario have begun seeing COR™ accreditation as a serious competitive edge among peers in the project bidding process.
We came across a situation where a company bid for a project at $750,000. Another company bid for the same project at $450,000. This was the lowest bid for that project. However, the buyer decided to go with the first company that bid $750,000. The reason being the lowest bidding company was not COR certified in Ontario while the highest bidder was. The second company lost the project despite bidding 40% lower.
This clearly explains how buyers are preferring companies that are COR™ certified in Ontario for assigning projects over those who are just registered. Mind you, this is irrespective of the bid differences. Being COR™ certified in Ontario ensures that you comply with the legal requirements of the OHS Act. Moreover, one of the biggest advantages of being COR certified in Ontario is that it encourages higher worker participation in occupational health and safety process while enhancing your organizational culture. Further, COR™ boosts your corporate image as a company committed towards creating a strong safety culture by attracting safety-conscious customers.
Gap Analysis
It is a good option to use the services of an expert external COR consultant for the gap analysis. Apart from serving as a vital OHS due diligence document, gap analysis by an expert external consultant provides you with an unbiased clear opinion on your program. In fact, they will also make relevant recommendations if your program has gaps. Further, they will provide you with a clear roadmap of where the organization is and where it needs to go for becoming COR certified in Ontario.
Conduct job hazard analysis
Job hazard analysis (JHA) helps you identify hazards based on activities performed. JHA helps in identification of job function hazards, and the probability and severity of workplace injury and/or illness as it relates to each categorized task.
It helps you identify and develop the SJPs / SWP (Safe Job/Work Procedures) for high risk tasks, which is vital for becoming COR certified in Ontario. Further, JHA increases the overall health and safety awareness in the workplace, making it easier for building a health and safety culture, which is again crucial for becoming COR certified in Ontario.
Seeking help from an expert COR support partner with regards to conducting a JHA is a good idea. In fact, a COR™ support partner can help you integrate your JHA with your business.
Implement an online system
Next, you are recommended to implement an online safety training and management system to capture and store records largely for documentation. An online safety training and management system will make it much easier to maintain information, communicate with your workers, and keep your health and safety program alive.
You can map your JHA that with an online system, which is an important feature. Apart from helping you with due diligence, online systems make it easier to track the progress of your health and safety initiatives, which is vital for COR certified in Ontario.
Training frontline supervisors
The next step is to get all your frontline supervisors and managers trained on understanding their responsibilities and the change in processes along with its requirements as the implementation takes place. This is crucial for COR™ certification since employee engagement is one of the major pillars on which the success of building a health and safety culture hinges. COR™ is all about creating and sustaining a health and safety culture.
One cannot just undermine the role of middle-management in COR™ certification. In fact, it is often the middle-management that often tends to resist change the most. Training middle-management is crucial simply because COR™ involves a major strategic change that needs to be executed across all levels of the organization. Often, it is your middle-management that will communicate your COR™ strategy across the organization.
With the Occupational Health and Safety Act constantly increasing the emphasis on the role of supervisors within an organization in terms of health and safety, training your supervisors for COR™ becomes even more important.
Provide comprehensive training for all employees
It’s good to ensure that all your employees undergo all the mandatory training and hazard-specific training. Moreover, it’s also important to ensure that you train them in all the new ways of carrying out their daily activities as well as filling in the required forms and checklists.
Regular training conducted by you constantly reinforces your company’s message in the minds of the employees, slowly making it a part of your organizational culture. Further, technology plays a big role in making the training process seamless, user-friendly, measurable, and efficiently manageable.
You can use online systems to train employees, manage their records, and monitor their performance easily and effectively. In fact, regular training of employees is one of the best engagement strategies that you can adopt.
Interactive training goes a long way in terms of creating the right atmosphere to build a workplace safety culture within your organization. Moreover, COR™ is all about creating a health and safety culture within your organization over a long term. One that is not dependent on individuals. Employee training will help you in this regard.
Thorough monitoring
The last step you are recommended to follow is to conduct thorough monitoring on an ongoing basis. It’s very important for you to ensure that what is being said in your program is being communicated, understood, and followed correctly by employees at all levels of your organization.
COR™ is a three-year certification provided by the Infrastructure Health & Safety Association (IHSA). Further, IHSA is the only approved provider (registrar) of COR™ in Ontario. IHSA provides the COR™ certification after the successful completion of internal and external audits, which takes approximately 12-18 months. The COR™ certification will be valid for three years from the date of issue. However, IHSA requires the employer to perform and successfully complete internal maintenance audits in year 2 and 3 while complying with the terms and conditions of the COR™ certification. Further, IHSA must approve all the internal audit results. IHSA issues a Letter of Good Standing for year 2 and 3 certifying that the training elements and audit standards were maintained by the employer.
Further, in year 4, the employer must reapply for the COR™ program and kick-start the process again. Key to COR™ accreditation success lies in an organization’s ability to demonstrate consistent application of its OHS program throughout the organization.
