We provide this Customized Learning series designed to help HR departments. We have observed that one of the most common challenge HR faces is that, while HR professionals understand employment law/labour law, front-line managers and supervisors often lack an in-depth understanding, and, even when well-intentioned, make missteps can quickly escalate into costly disputes, grievances, or human rights complaints.

To address this gap, we offer Customized Human Resources Employment Law Lessons, a Learning Series explicitly designed for various kinds of organizations’ leadership and supervisory teams.

Why is this training different?

• It is customized to your organization. It incorporates your workplace policies and your collective agreements (if any).
• We show how the law is interpreted by the courts/tribunals using relevant case law examples related to your industry/sector, so the attendees can better relate to the training.
• The training is practical and interactive, not academic or theoretical
• Delivered in manageable sessions (2–2.5 hours per session, typically delivered monthly)

The goal is simple: To make sure that your leadership has the legal knowledge they need to prevent issues before they reach the HR manager’s desk or their legal counsel’s desk.

We offer customized training for your specific type of organization including Health Care (Hospitals), Education, Municipalities, Mining, First Nations, etc. This training will be customized to your specific organization, which includes the law that applies to your Human Resources, your collective agreements (if any), your workplace policies, and the relevant case law that is connected to your type of organization.

The training can be flexibly delivered

Training can be delivered:

• In person,
• Live via Zoom or Microsoft Teams, or
• A mix of in-person and live through Zoom or Microsoft Teams

We aim to have engaging training where participants are free to ask questions about Human Resources issues that they may encounter. Below is an example of how the customized training may look like if you choose to retain our services:

Lesson 1: Ontario’s Human Rights Code and the protected human rights grounds

• Explains the Ontario Human Rights Code and protected grounds of discrimination, which are constantly relevant throughout the employment relationship.
• Notes management’s responsibility to prevent discrimination in the workplace based on Code-protected grounds.
• The training uses real cases to demonstrate the application of the Human Rights Code involving employees that work in the same sector as you do.

Lesson 2: Duty to accommodate

• Explains the obligation to accommodate employees in the workplace based on the protected human rights grounds.
• Addresses the need to accommodate employees under your collective agreement and/or workplace policies.
• Addresses the employer’s duty to inquire when there is a hidden disability, such as a staff member with an alcohol or drug dependency.
• Comments on how a good and effective accommodation system can attract new employees and minimize complaints and conflicts in the workplace.

Lesson 3: Limits to the duty to accommodate

• Expands on when the accommodation becomes undue hardship.
• Expounds on when the job requirement is a bona fide occupational requirement.
• Contains cases that address how courts have considered the limits on the duty to accommodate, including:
  • A case where a hospital unsuccessfully tried to claim that it was undue hardship to accommodate a nurse who would need to take unplanned leaves when her bi-polar disease relapses.
  • A case where a personal support worker was wrongfully dismissed when the employer rejected her request that she only work during certain hours, so she can address childcare obligations.

Lesson 4: Workplace harassment

• Explains what workplace harassment is and how it is both connected to and expands on the employer’s human rights obligations.
• Illustrates how the employer must protect employees from harassment from both employees and community members/clients that they may interact with.
• Describes the employer’s obligation to prevent workplace harassment under the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA)
• Addresses how workplace harassment is dealt with under your collective agreement and/or workplace policies.

Lesson 5: Workplace violence

• Explains what workplace violence is and how the employer has obligations, like with harassment, to address workplace violence under the OHSA.
• Describes how the employer must protect employees from both violent colleagues and violent community members/clients that they may interact with.
• Addresses how workplace violence is dealt with in your collective agreement and/or workplace policies.
• Refers to relevant cases to explain the duty to address and prevent workplace violence such as:
  • A non-profit workplace getting fined for not doing a workplace violence risk reassessment when a violent patient was assaulting its nurses.
  • An employer getting an injunction to prevent domestic violence from coming into their workplace.

Lesson 6: Legal obligations when addressing workplace conflicts

• Explains the employer’s legal obligation to address workplace conflict, as not all conflicts rise to the level of workplace harassment and violence.
• Addresses the legal obligations that the employer has when dealing with a workplace conflict.
• Talks about the growing issue of workplace conflict on social media.
• Speaks on how to properly investigate workplace conflict.
• Notes cost preventive measures that should be taken when addressing a workplace conflict.
• Includes recent case law related to your sector to support the content of this presentation.

Lesson 7: Practical means of addressing workplace conflicts¹

• Builds on lesson 6 by giving a practical way of addressing workplace conflict beyond just the legal obligations.
• Unlike the other lessons, which are created and presented by employees of SDLaw, this section is done by a professional consultant, who specializes in addressing workplace conflict.
• Explains how to deal with conflicting personalities while retaining both employees.
  • Notes the impacts of unresolved conflict.
  • States the positive side of conflict and conflict resolution.
• Addresses how to have the difficult conversations and come to a resolution.
  • Understanding how you and others approach conflict
  • Managing your emotions

Lesson 8: Disciplining employees

• After explaining the various ways that employees can misbehave in the previous lessons, this is the first of three lessons that discuss what supervisors can do to directly address misbehaviour.
• Explains the ability of supervisors and managers to discipline employees.
• Addresses the limits to disciplining an employee under the Employment Standards Act.
• Notes the ability and limits to discipline based on various sections of your collective agreement and/or workplace policies.

Lesson 9: How to properly apply progressive discipline

• Builds on the previous lesson by explaining how to use progressive discipline to address employee misbehaviour.
• Notes how progressive discipline can be used to correct misbehaviour, allowing the employer to retain employees.
• Discusses the appropriate steps when issuing a verbal warning and how to document it.
• Reviews the steps to giving an employee a written warning.
• Notes the proper procedure to give an employee a valid suspension for misbehaviour.
• Uses cases to demonstrate what courts have determined is an appropriate level of discipline for employees’ misbehaviour.

Lesson 10: Navigating the legal landmines of termination

• This lesson focuses on termination, which is the final step when progressive discipline does not solve the workplace problems.
• Focuses on the risks tied to termination and when it can be inappropriate.
• Explains the limits of termination under your collective agreement and/or workplace policies and the Employment Standards Act.
• Uses case law to show how other employers have made mistakes when terminating an employee.

Lesson 11: Conclusion

• Final lesson that allows us to address any questions that the participants may have.
• Goes over all that has been learned at a high level to show how the key concepts taught in the prior lessons interact with each other.
• Used to explain complicated concepts that may have been misunderstood by participants in the previous lessons.
• Contains interactive scenarios where participants test their knowledge that they gained from previous lessons with feedback from one of our employment lawyers.

If you are interested in our customized human resources employment law lessons, please contact us by either emailing us at learning@sdlawtimmins.com or calling us at 705-268-6492.

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¹ Subject to the availability of a professional consultant. If no consultant is available, you will have the choice between an additional lesson by SDLaw or be refunded for the cost of this lesson.