Canadian HR Reporter

20 20 20 Field operators were consulted in the creation of best practices, including how to use the equipment as well as safety procedures and environmental factors. Employees work through the best practices via e-learning courses with their tablets. Once they pass a knowledge exam, they are able to download the necessary on-the-job training forms. Along with a peer trainer, employees complete the forms as they train with the equipment in the fi eld. Following an assessment by a site supervisor, the employee is declared competent and becomes a peer coach for fellow employees undergoing training. "We don't have a classroom big enough or a teacher smart enough to teach everyone everything they need to know in this business," Koop says. "So we need to rely on each other and be able to teach each other." To facilitate this, an online coaching module was developed for CERT. The module incorporates Calfrac's culture and core values. "If we expect an employee to coach somebody else," says Koop, "we need to give them the skills and tools to be able to do that." The coaching module is indicative of Calfrac's goals moving forward, he said. The company sees its CERT program as an opportunity for the organization to become a learning organization and cultivate peer-to-peer training and the sharing of information on an ongoing basis. This sharing of information is just as helpful to leadership as it is to fi eld operators, according to Stenson. Through the tablets' form and checklist formats, supervisors are able to follow employees' training progress in real time. By removing any guesswork, supervisors can work with new employees confi dently, contributing to increased labour mobility. CERT's standardized training and readily available employee information means fi eld operators can easily move to a different crew, division or district. Calfrac is currently working on translating the program, to ensure employees in the United States, Russia and Argentina are also trained using the same strategy. Additionally, the company plans to expand the program to create modules for its maintenance staff, front-line supervisors and engineers. "We standardized all of the training across the company," says Stenson. "That way, everybody gets the same training at the same time. It's really cost-saving. Yes, we had to spend money, but now we're reaping the rewards." Simulator training is highly effective, but extremely costly. A single simulator for one piece of equipment can cost as much as $1 million, according to Calfrac. By blending online and on-the-job learning, Calfrac was able to create a training and development program that was both meaningful and economical. Modules were created for each separate piece of machinery, at an average cost of less than $20,000 per module. Calfrac spent about $280,000 to furnish each employee with her own tablet. Employees are also paid two hours' wages to complete each module, as their learning is done on their own time. In the end, says Stenson, the cost of the tablets was considered to be far less than the cost of printing physical copies of dozens of manuals. "We weren't real keen, with 3,000 employees, on the idea of giving everybody a manual," he says. "You can see what that would have cost us, from an environmental perspective. It would have been a whole lot of paper, a whole lot of ink and a whole lot of money." Equally positive has been the response from employees, Koop says. "From our operations and our leadership, we've seen a really good response," he says. "They've driven it, and we've seen an incredible adoption rate." CALFRAC < pg. 18 Cost of tablets far less than manuals This sharing of information is just as helpful to leadership Additionally, the company plans to expand the program employees, as well as members of CBC's legal and human resources departments, though not Ghomeshi himself. At the outset, Rubin and her team established a phone line and email account dedicated solely to receiving tips and relevant information. The sheer scope of the investigation was only the fi rst challenge, she says. "The second, perhaps not-so-obvious challenge was completing the project in a timely fashion," she says. "This was a very, very large project. And we moved at a clip." In the spotlight The Ghomeshi case shed light not only on employer practices and subsequent legal implications, but also on the impact that public opinion and perception can have on the reputation of an organization — especially one as publicly accountable as the CBC. "The court of public opinion will weigh in much faster than an adjudicator or an arbitrator — and the court of public opinion appears not to be very favourable to businesses that allow this to happen," Rubin says. As lead investigator on the case, Rubin wanted to deliver a report that was fair. "I wanted to get the work done, and I wanted to produce a report that would be helpful. I wanted to make sure that the process was fair for those who were involved, and I tried really hard not to be distracted by what was going on in the media." Lessons learned By exposing the shortfalls of the CBC in the Ghomeshi case, Rubin says she highlighted for every employer not only the risks associated with lack of action, but also t h e appropriate steps necessary to prevent harassment — and the adequate response, should prevention fail. "You can't assume that all people in the workplace know how to behave in a respectful or non-harassing or non-discriminatory fashion — or that if they do know how to behave this way, that they will be inclined to do so," says Rubin. "Critically, employers should hold all people within the organization accountable to the standards expected — and I mean all people." The onus, therefore, is on an organization's leadership and management team to drive home what is acceptable and what is not. "Another thing that comes home to me over and over again when I do this type of work is that workplaces that are respectful and are free from harassment and discrimination don't just happen," she said. "It has to be a priority within the organization's culture and the organization's workplace practices, and it has to be modelled by everyone in the organization." So how does a company do that? Rubin says training and explaining to employees the standard, and then ingraining those rules into the culture, are ways to create a respectful workplace. For the CBC, she made nine recommendations that the broadcaster said it has adopted and is working to implement with the CMG. So far, CBC committed to review and clarify policies in its behavioural standard and to provide better customized training on it, to conduct "spot audits" to determine the status of workplace environments, and to establish a workplace hotline for reporting, as well as a dedicated ombudsperson and task force to address the vulnerabilities of certain types of employees, including young and part-time staffers. The response from the broadcaster is indicative of the importance of providing a safe work environment — the legal punishment for which Rubin says is becoming increasingly harsh. "All organizations should be infl uenced by the legal requirement, and they are increasingly hard on employers who allow abusive behaviour in the workplace." For someone in her line of work, Rubin says this year has been an interesting one so far, citing Marie Deschamps' report highlighting issues of sexual misconduct, harassment and discrimination in the Canadian Forces, and investigations at Dalhousie University in Halifax following allegations of sexual harassment. In both cases, the organizations made swift commitments to changing for a safer and more respectful workplace. Rubin says she hopes it brings to light some of the underlying issues of harassment on the job. "It is still an area of behaviour that is misunderstood," she says. "We hope generally our reports shed some light on that type of behaviour and also shed some light on the impact of that behaviour on the individuals who experience it." As lead investigator on the case, Rubin wanted to deliver a report that was fair. done, and I wanted to produce a report that would be helpful. the CBC in the Ghomeshi case, Rubin says she highlighted for every employer not only the risks t h e RUBIN < pg. 19 CBC said to be adopting 9 recommendations

• Cover