HR MATTERS - Winter 2012 Issue

Happy New Year,

"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day." (Edith Lovejoy Pierce.) On behalf of us here at Kinnear & Associates Consulting, we would like to extend our very best wishes for a healthy and inspiring 2012. With this brand new year, come other new beginnings. Our quarterly newsletter, HR MATTERS has a new look which we are pretty excited about. We are about ready to launch our new website kinnearandassociates.com the second week in January. As always, your input is invaluable to us and we look forward to hearing how you like the new format of the newsletter and website. Maybe it goes back to childhood, but I have always felt that September and January are pretty serious months. Nose to the proverbial grindstone, kind of months. A time to knuckle down; get back to business; another chance to get it right!

As we, at Kinnear & Associates gear up for the year ahead, we remain resolute in our commitment to provide you with timely, relevant and provocative information which we hope will help you to make good HR decisions for your organization. For those of you whom we'vealready worked with, we thank you for allowing us into your workplaces and we hope to have the opportunity to work with you once again. For those of you whom we have not yet met, we welcome the opportunity of working with you in 2012.

Brenda Kinnear,
President Kinnear & Associates Consulting

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Health-Care Rx: Reducing work absences among Canadian Nurses

Creating non-violent and supportive health-care workplaces might help prevent prolonged work absences among nurses. This is the upshot of a new study from the Institute for Work & Health. With the health-care sector having the highest rate of lost-time claims and work absence in the country, disability managers in Canada's health-care organizations may want to join forces with their counterparts in human resources to implement violence prevention and respectful workplace programs. A new study from the Institute for Work & Health (IWH) shows that emotional and physical abuse at work, as well as disrespectful and unsupportive work environments, are associated with prolonged work absences among nurses.

"Our findings suggest that violence prevention is also work absence prevention," says IWH Adjunct Scientist Dr. Renée-Louise Franche, a clinical psychologist at Vancouver General Hospital who led the study looking at the impact of worker and workplace factors on absenteeism among nurses. "According to our study, being abused or assaulted on the job is strongly associated with nurses having prolonged work absences. It is also indirectly connected by creating a poorer workplace culture and lower respect and support from co-workers, both of which are associated with increased work absence duration."

The study, published in the August 2011 issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (vol. 53, no. 8, pp. 919-927), collected information on almost 12,000 female, direct-care Canadian nurses from Statistics Canada's 2005 National Survey of the Work and Health of Nurses. Factors related to nurses' personal health and their workplaces were examined relative to three categories of work absences: none, short-term (one to 10 work days) and prolonged (11 or more work days).

Worker health factors—namely pain that interfered with the ability to work, more severe pain, depression and having a higher number of chronic health conditions (such as arthritis, migraine and back pain)—had the biggest effect on the length of nurses' work absences. Workplace factors had a smaller effect overall, with those having the most impact being emotional or physical abuse by a patient, visitor or co-worker, and low respect and low support at work.

The combined effect of worker and workplace factors was the most novel finding in this study, as few previous studies have examined this. Take pain-related work interference, for example, the factor most strongly associated with prolonged absences among nurses. "It looks like pain interference is a product of both worker and workplace factors," says Franche. "That is, the degree to which pain interferes with work may depend not only on a nurse's pain level, but also on the demands, both physical and social, of the environment in which she works."

Potential strategies to reduce long absences
The study's findings suggest a number of ways in which health-care organizations can help decrease time away from work among nurses. Franche points to these potential strategies:

• Implement or augment violence prevention programs. Among those in the 2005 Statistics Canada nurses' survey that were included in this study, 57 per cent reported being emotionally abused at work and 31 per cent reported being physically assaulted at work during the previous year. Abuse or assault at work by a co-worker was particularly common, with 55 per cent of nurses reporting abuse or assault by a co-worker, compared to 25 per cent reporting abuse or assault by a patient or visitor. "Many health-care organizations have implemented violence prevention programs since then," says Franche. "But they need to keep vigilant on this front."
• Manage symptoms and episodes at work.
• Offer self-management programs that address pain and depression, focusing on the work environment. "The workplace doesn't have full control of workers' pain and depression, but it can help deal with issues by offering self-management approaches," says Franche. "For example, more workplaces are offering relaxation and meditation courses, and these could be extended to include strategies on how to
• Address respect, support and organizational culture. This includes nurses' feelings of control over their practice and autonomy at work, as well as their relationships with doctors and co-workers.
• Focus disability management practices on workers who are still on the job but struggling with multiple physical and mental health conditions.

Source: At Work, Issue 66, fall 2011: Institute for Work & Health, Toronto

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FAMILY CARE GIVER LEAVE
Helping Families Care for Sick Loved Ones

McGuinty Government Moves to Strengthen Job Security for Family Caregivers

Ontario will be taking steps to protect the jobs of working Ontarians who need to care for seriously ill or injured loved ones.

The McGuinty Government intends to introduce legislation today that would, if passed, recognize the importance of family, job security and would build on the existing Family Medical Leave to provide up to 8 weeks of unpaid job leave for employees to provide care and support to a sick or injured family member.

Whether it is a young child spending time in the hospital or an elderly parent suffering a broken hip, caregivers would be able to focus their attention on what matters most -- providing care and support to their loved one -- without the fear of losing their job. Ontario is also calling on its federal partners to extend Employment Insurance to those who take advantage of Family Caregiver Leave, just as they do when Ontarians take Family Medical Leave.

The proposed legislation is part of the McGuinty government's commitment to ensure that families across Ontario have the support they need when they need it most.

• The proposed legislation would, if passed, be separate from the current Family Medical Leave which is available when a family member has a serious medical condition with a significant risk of death occurring within 26 weeks.
• A doctor's note would be required to qualify for Family Caregiver Leave.

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A GUIDE TO CONTINGENCY PLANNING

By Brenda Kinnear

Post 9-11, organizations have recognized that business continuity planning is a mission critical function. A business contingency plan (BCP) is developed to ensure business continuity following an organization's exposure to internal and external threats resulting from natural, man-made and/or social/political/economic/health emergencies such as:

• Natural disasters such as tornadoes, floods, blizzards, earthquakes, fires etc.
• Accidents
• Sabotage, bomb threats, hostage taking
• Power and energy disruptions
• Communications, transportation, safety and service sector failure
• Environmental disasters such as pollution and hazardous materials spills
• Cyber attacks and hacker activity

The BCP identifies the organization's exposure to threats and provides effective prevention and recovery strategies to ensure continuity of mission critical functions and services

The over-arching purpose of the BCP plan and policy is to reduce adverse impacts on employees and clients of the organization. It enhances organizational efficiency in terms of identifying the relationship of assets and human and financial resources to critical services and/or products. Critical services or products are those that must be delivered to ensure survival, avoid causing injury, and meet legal or other obligations of an organization. The following represents key considerations when conceptualizing your BCP:

1. Risk Analysis - business impact analysis
   Identify probable emergency situations; assessing impact in terms of possible physical, human and property impacts; exploring options & development of appropriate contingencies:
   • What can go wrong?
   • What is the impact on the organization?
   • How likely is it to occur?
   • What is the probable frequency of occurrence?
2. Identification of mission critical functions & rating relative importance of each function (i.e. vital, critical, essential, important, non-critical or deferrable)
3. Policy Development (evacuation, fire, security, WHMIS, H & S policies, risk management, etc.)
4. Establishment of business continuity plan for continuity of operations - service, communications, records back-up including off-site storage, payroll, financial decision making, staffing, relocation,
5. Distribution of the plan
6. Annual review of emergency plans

Establishment of Emergency Response Team (ERT)

1. Who (Chair of Team, Emergency Response Coordinator)
2. H & S Representatives (first aid, certified members)
3. Defined roles & accountabilities
4. Training (ER procedures, ER equipment, evacuation procedures etc.)
5. Documentation

Type of Stoppage
Natural emergency - storms, freeze up, floods, earthquakes, lightening strikes
Man-made-emergencies - explosions, fire, long-term power outage (12+ hrs), structural collapse, disruption of water supply, loss of primary heat source (12+ hrs.) carbon monoxide evacuation, loss of communication systems, loss of access to banks & other relevant institutions. Other man-made emergencies (environmental contamination, toxic chemical release & transportation emergencies.)

Social/political/economic/health emergencies -strikes, loss of life or suicide of staff member/client, sabotage of some nature, bomb threats, hostage taking, civil disobedience, war, unexpected program closures, disease & pandemic.

Authority for decision making

Tele-Communications

1. 9-1-1
2. Staff lists
3. Establishment of emergency call lists
4. Computer systems
5. Internal communications
6. Cell phones communication
7. Meeting of ERT
8. Media

Contingency Planning

1. Short & long term contingency planning
2. Establish specific contingency plans for all emergency types
3. Designated supplies checked monthly by H & S Committee
4. Staff training to implement emergency response procedures

Relocation

1. Establishment of short & long term relocation arrangements for both operations & clients
2. Establishment of mutual aid agreements to be negotiated for purposes of sharing personnel and equipment as required (i.e. other agencies, ministry, municipality, fire, health services etc.)

Post-Emergency Analysis

1. Damage claims assessment
2. Counseling
3. Evaluation & updating of Emergency Response Plans

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Salary gains of 3.1 per cent expected in 2012:

Conference Board Highest increases projected in Saskatchewan, lowest in Ontario, Atlantic provinces

Amid an uncertain economic climate, Canadian workers can expect average salary increases of 3.1 per cent in 2012, according to the Conference Board of Canada's Compensation Planning Outlook 2012.

"Canadian organizations remain optimistic, but guarded, in the midst of a turbulent global outlook and higher-than-normal economic risk," said Karla Thorpe, director of leadership and human resources research at the Conference Board. "As confidence in the global economy continues to weaken, employers and employees watch anxiously in the hopes that Canada can weather the storm,"

The projected 2012 average non-unionized base pay increase of 3.1 per cent is higher than the actual average gains in both 2010 (2.7 per cent) and 2011 (three per cent). However, salary increases have not yet returned to pre-recession levels (increases averaged 4.2 per cent in 2008), said the Conference Board, which surveyed 381 organizations for the report.

At 3.9 per cent, Saskatchewan leads all provinces in 2012 average increases, followed by Alberta at 3.6 per cent. The lowest base pay increases are projected to occur in Ontario and Atlantic Canada, whose workers can expect gains of 2.7 per cent next year.

Projected increases are highest in the oil and gas industry at 4.3 per cent, followed by the natural resources industry (excluding oil and gas), at 4.1 per cent. The lowest average increases are expected in the retail trade sector, averaging 2.4 per cent, found the report.

The average projected increase in base pay among non-unionized employees in the private sector is 3.2 per cent, while non-unionized public sector workers are expected to see increases of 2.6 per cent. Anticipated wage increases for unionized employees are projected to be two per cent in 2012 — 1.5 per cent in the public sector and 2.3 per cent in the private sector.

© Copyright Canadian HR Reporter, Thomson Reuters Canada Limited.