FAQs

An occupational health and safety management system is a coordinated system of procedures, processes and other measures to develop a consistent corporate approach to health and safety and to promote continuous improvement in workplace health and safety. 

An occupational health and safety management system is often accompanied by a technological solution to manage and monitor health and safety processes/procedures, conduct analysis and mitigate risk. 

For example, this could include a dashboard that a manager reviews to ensure that certain safety checks occur at a specific frequency and that every worker has the required up-to-date training for every task. This can boost employee confidence that every job is being done the safest possible way.

Occupational health and safety management systems are considered a best practice for health and safety in the workplace and provide several benefits to ensure employee safety at work while minimizing organizational risk.

Benefits of an enterprise occupational health and safety management system include:

• A consistent approach to health and safety across the organization.
• Having established standards for acceptable levels of health and safety compliance and the ability to monitor compliance levels.
• Having lines of accountability for all levels of supervisory responsibility.
• Having a system that provides meaningful data to quickly identify health and safety gaps and implement risk mitigation strategies.
• Reduced risk of accidents and at-risk behaviours, which benefits all employees and the organization as a whole.
• Emphasizes the importance of health and safety and makes it a priority for every employee.

The move to a modernized occupational health and safety management system will provide clear guidelines on how the City of Greater Sudbury Health and Safety Commitment, signed by Council and all General Managers will be implemented.

As you know, CGS currently has a variety of:

• health and safety policies and programs, 
• standard operating procedures and 
• work instructions. 

An occupational health and safety management system provides the opportunity to: 

• more easily share these documents across departments, 
• reduce duplication (for example, develop a corporate policy that can replace multiple divisional/sectional procedures) and 
• improve consistency across the organization. 

The project team will develop a documentation standard for all current and future health and safety related documents.

Because work across the City is so diverse, each department/division/section will still be responsible for their own standard operating procedures and work instructions that are specific to the work they do and the equipment they use.

A plan will be developed to operationalize the management system (who is responsible for what, how we ensure compliance, how we track how well we are doing, how we manage risks and more) which will be implemented across the organization.

The final step will be to identify a technology that houses all of the policies, helps to monitor and manage risks and ensures compliance with the new health and safety management system.

Once the new occupational health and safety management system is in place, it will be your responsibility to ensure you follow the standards and updated practices. 

They will apply to all employees, regardless of whether your work is permanent, contract, casual, part-time or you work remotely.

There will be opportunities to provide input as the project progresses.

In the meantime, please use the Ask a Question tool to ask questions of the project team. 

The project is being led by the Project Team which reports to the project Steering Committee comprised of the Executive Leadership Team (ELT).

There are three working groups led by staff who are each responsible for a different component of the management system.

There are two advisory groups to the project. One includes representatives from each Joint Health and Safety Committee and the other includes Union executives.