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WHMIS De-Mystified

It’s time you knew the truth about Canada’s “Workplace Hazardous Material Information System”

Has anyone knocked on your door lately to warn you that WHMIS has changed and that you need to retrain your staff—annually?

Not true. Not any of it.

You’re hearing aggressive messages like this from unscrupulous sales reps pretending to be affiliated with the Ministry of Labour (MOL) and selling so-called “official” workplace posters and safety training—none of which may comply with employment or health and safety standards.

How can you protect yourself from these dishonest and seemingly ubiquitous providers, eager to capitalize on employers’ confusion about WHMIS standards? By arming yourself with the facts, and only doing business with firms whose sales pitch reflects what you know to be the truth.

Here’s a quick primer on WHMIS and how to protect yourself.  

Know the three “must-haves”

“Workplace Hazardous Material Information System” is a Canada-wide regulation that affects all businesses (no matter how small), and is a critical component of your workplace-specific training program for staff.

You need to have three elements in place to be in compliance with WHMIS:

• An up-to-date inventory of every hazardous material in your workplace. 
• A system for assembling information on each of the hazardous materials, including Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), which are provided by your suppliers.
• Training that prepares your staff to recognize and safely work with hazardous materials. (You do not need to train employees annually; rather, you should test staff annually, and provide training when testing reveals gaps in knowledge or when you introduce a new hazardous material to the workplace.)

Keep MOL inspections short and sweet

Employers that can’t easily produce inventories, data binders, or evidence of staff competence, encourage inspectors to dig deeper. You can shorten an inspector’s visit by:

• Revising your inventory of hazardous products every time you add or stop using one.
• Updating your MSDS sheets every two or three years. Keep a paper version, just in case your computer system goes down. Make sure staff know where to find your MSDS binders.
• Maintaining a list of employee names and the date they successfully completed either a training program or a test. Keep testing simple: distribute your WHMIS materials via your Intranet or hard copies, ask staff to review just prior to the test, and set a pass threshold of 80 per cent. Test new employees, even if they’re already WHMIS-trained—just to be sure.

Line up the dominos

By doing the due diligence of assessing your risks, putting an effective control program in place, and preparing your staff to protect themselves, you’ve not only safeguarded your reputation and bottom line—you’ve also increased the chances of staff being more aware and better able to protect themselves and their families when using hazardous consumer products at home. That’s a chain reaction worth activating. 

Don’t walk this road alone

OSSA is a not-for-profit health and safety association authorized by the WSIB to provide a wealth of health and safety expertise through its programs, training, products and tools. As a trusted advisor in business for the sole purpose of helping your staff become healthier and safer, OSSA’s goal is to make sure cost isn’t a barrier to any employee in Ontario’s service sector knowing how to protect themselves in the event they’re exposed to a hazardous material. To that end, OSSA has developed “WHMIS Digital”—a customized, cost-effective way to provide proven WHMIS training for as little as $2.50 per employee, annually. Contact OSSA at info@ossa.com or 1-800-525-2468 for more information.

 

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