Canadian HR Reporter

www.hrreporter.com 11 the employer's purpose of ensuring social distancing, that's an interesting concept because it' ll come down to: How accurate is this device? Are there potential situations in the workplace where you might be one inch off from someone?" she says. "Another consideration would be what happens to the information that is provided by customers? How is it stored? In paper format? Is it electron- ically stored?" Writing down all of these consid- erations in a policy is key to keeping employees safe and the employer's bases covered, says Singh. "What I recommend employers do is make sure employees are educated on the policy and make sure the employees have to sign some acknowledgement that they've read and understood the policy. That will help with enforceability because it would be hard for someone to say they didn't know the policy when they've gone through a training session and acknowledged the policy." HR messaging around social distancing It's important also for HR departments to push the message that the employer is not instituting these new policies see what interaction they had with that individual. This is a lot easier than doing this process manually." Legal questions around tracing data While many employees are embracing the technology, not everybody is thrilled about being tracked while at work, says St-Germain. "The conversation I've had with some clients is a lot of employees are ques- tioning the use of the product ― they're wondering if they're being tracked every- where: 'Do they want to know when I go to the washroom?' They're wary of the platform, and we understand where everybody's coming from," he says. "That being said, the clients that were the most successful at implementing it were super transparent with the employees by showing what data we were collecting and what information… the employer had access to." But these kinds of technologies do raise some privacy concerns over what is being done with the data, says Jennifer Singh, labour and employment lawyer at McInnes Cooper in Halifax. "What kind of access does this machine have to data? And who is ulti- mately getting the data? If it's just for simply to control workers, says Singh. "What should be kept in mind is health and safety in the workplace because that's priority number one right now. The best way is paying close atten- tion to government directives as they relate to the workplace because that' ll inform the degree and extent of safety measures that need to be taken." For years, health and safety commit- tees have largely focused on better- known issues such as ergonomics, chemical hazards or physical risks. With the pandemic, that strategy needs to be modified somewhat, even after most people have been vaccinated and are basically COVID-free, says Salveta, with a focus on distancing and sani- tizing efforts. "HR are going to look at [these newer initiatives] and say it's the new occu- pational health and safety program. They're going to assess which ones should continue and in what form does it continue. HR will be the champion to educate and make sure on the occu- pational health and safety committee that it's addressed and looked at on an ongoing basis." And, of course, it's not only physical safety that needs to be promoted, says Thompson. "Psychological safety is a growing concern in Canada during this period of time ― there's anxiety, there's fear, folks don't know exactly what's coming, misinformation, distrust. What employers can really do is articulate more and more that they are following the rules as best they can," he says. "Certainly, HR is a vehicle to communi- cate those concerns." CHRR "Make sure the employees have to sign some acknowledgement that they've read and understood the policy. That will help with enforceability." Jennifer Singh, McInnes Cooper

• Cover
• Untitled
• Untitled (1)