Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act requires employers to prepare a workplace violence policy and a workplace harassment policy, to develop and maintain a program implementing each one, and to provide each worker with information and instruction that is appropriate for the worker on the contents of those policies and programs. Because the required instruction concerns the employer’s own policies and programs, a general awareness course can support the duty. It cannot satisfy it on its own. Workers must also be instructed on the workplace-specific procedures they are expected to follow.
Scope: This article addresses provincially regulated Ontario workplaces under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Federally regulated workplaces are governed by Part II of the Canada Labour Code and the Work Place Harassment and Violence Prevention Regulations. Ontario’s Human Rights Code and other legal duties may also apply.
What this article settles
Does Ontario law require workplace violence and harassment training?
Yes, with one precision that changes what an employer has to be able to show.
Part III.0.1 of the Act uses the phrase information and instruction. It does not prescribe a workplace violence and harassment certificate. Subsection 32.0.5 (2) requires an employer to provide a worker with information and instruction that is appropriate for the worker on the contents of the policy and program with respect to workplace violence. Section 32.0.8 places the same duty on the employer with respect to workplace harassment.
Most employers call this workplace violence and harassment training. That is a fair name for it, and a course is one common way to deliver it. But the duty is not met by the fact that a course was completed. It is met when each worker has received information and instruction appropriate for them on the contents of your policy and your program.
The difference matters when compliance is tested. A completion record can show that a course was taken. It does not, by itself, establish that the worker received information and instruction appropriate to them on the workplace’s own reporting routes, procedures, risks and controls.
What information and instruction means under the OHSA
Two phrases in those sections determine what the duty actually requires.
On the contents of the policy and program. The subject of the duty is your workplace-specific policies and programs, not the topic in general. If a worker can define workplace harassment but does not know where or how to report it, that is evidence that further workplace-specific instruction may be needed.
Appropriate for the worker. The standard is not uniform across a workforce. What is appropriate depends on the worker, the work and the workplace. A worker who serves the public at a counter, a worker who closes alone at night, and a supervisor who will receive complaints do not need identical instruction, because they do not carry identical responsibilities.
The definitions in the Act also cover digital conduct. Workplace harassment and workplace sexual harassment are each defined to include a course of vexatious comment or conduct carried on virtually through the use of information and communications technology. Conduct does not fall outside the definition simply because it happened in a work group chat, on a messaging platform or by email. What matters is whether the conduct meets the definition, not the channel.
Does this include sexual harassment?
Yes. It is not a separate subject an employer may address on its own timetable. The definition of workplace harassment in subsection 1 (1) of the Act expressly includes workplace sexual harassment.
It covers a course of vexatious comment or conduct against a worker because of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, where the conduct is known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome. It also covers a sexual solicitation or advance made by a person who is in a position to confer, grant or deny a benefit or advancement to the worker, where that person knows or ought reasonably to know the solicitation or advance is unwelcome.
Your harassment policy, your harassment program and your worker instruction therefore have to address it. The Act does not require a separate sexual harassment course. It does not permit the subject to be left out either.
What a training certificate proves, and what it does not
A completion record matters. It is evidence, and evidence is what an employer needs to demonstrate that it met its duties. But different records prove different things. A certificate shows completion. A course outline shows content. Workplace records show whether the required system exists. Difficulty arises when the first is treated as though it were the third.
Every item in the right column is either an express requirement of the Act or workplace-specific information the required instruction has to cover. A general course that does not incorporate the employer’s actual policies, programs, risks, controls and reporting arrangements cannot establish those workplace-specific facts.
What Ontario employers must have in place behind the training
The instruction duty sits at the end of a structure. If the structure is not there, there is nothing specific to instruct workers about.
Policies addressing both subjects. An employer must prepare a policy with respect to workplace violence and a policy with respect to workplace harassment, and review them as often as is necessary and at least annually (32.0.1 (1)). Both subjects have to be addressed. The Ministry’s guidance confirms that they may sit in separate documents or be combined into one, provided all the requirements for each are met. Annual review is a floor, not a target.
Written form and posting. The policies must be in written form and posted in a conspicuous place in the workplace, or made available in a readily accessible electronic format (32.0.1 (2)). This does not apply where five or fewer workers are regularly employed at the workplace, unless an inspector orders otherwise (32.0.1 (3)).
Small workplaces, read this carefully.
The five or fewer exception applies to the written form and posting requirement in subsection 32.0.1 (2). It does not remove the duty to prepare the policies, it does not remove the duty to develop and maintain the programs, and it does not remove the separate requirement in section 32.0.6 that the harassment program be in writing.
A workplace violence program. The employer must develop and maintain a program implementing the violence policy (32.0.2 (1)). It must include measures and procedures to control the risks identified in the assessment as likely to expose a worker to physical injury, to summon immediate assistance when violence occurs or is likely to occur, and for workers to report incidents, and it must set out how the employer will investigate and deal with incidents and complaints (32.0.2 (2)). Section 32.0.2 does not expressly require this program to be in writing. As a practical matter, however, an unwritten program is difficult to instruct workers on and difficult to demonstrate afterward.
A workplace violence risk assessment. The employer must assess the risks of workplace violence arising from the nature of the workplace, the type of work and the conditions of work (32.0.3 (1)), taking into account circumstances common to similar workplaces and circumstances specific to that workplace (32.0.3 (2)). The results go to the joint health and safety committee or the health and safety representative, or to the workers where there is neither (32.0.3 (3)). The risks must be reassessed as often as is necessary to ensure the policy and program continue to protect workers (32.0.3 (4)). There is no annual wording here. The trigger is necessity.
Section 32.0.3 does not require the assessment to be in writing by default, and section 55.2 authorizes an inspector to require the assessment or a reassessment to be put in writing. As a practical matter, a verbal assessment leaves no durable record of the risks considered, the conclusions reached, or the circumstances that should trigger a reassessment.
Information about a person with a history of violent behaviour. Where a worker can be expected to encounter a person with a history of violent behaviour in the course of their work, and the risk of workplace violence is likely to expose that worker to physical injury, the employer’s and the supervisor’s information duties include providing information about that risk, including personal information (32.0.5 (3)). No more personal information may be disclosed than is reasonably necessary to protect the worker from physical injury (32.0.5 (4)). This provision creates a duty to disclose and a limit on disclosure at the same time.
Domestic violence precautions. Where an employer becomes aware, or ought reasonably to be aware, that domestic violence that would likely expose a worker to physical injury may occur in the workplace, the employer must take every precaution reasonable in the circumstances for the protection of the worker (32.0.4).
A written workplace harassment program. This one the Act does expressly require to be in writing, and to be developed and maintained in consultation with the joint health and safety committee or the health and safety representative, if there is one (32.0.6 (1)). It must set out how workers report incidents to the employer or supervisor, how they report to someone else where that person is the alleged harasser, how incidents and complaints will be investigated and dealt with, how information obtained will be protected from disclosure except where necessary to investigate or take corrective action or where otherwise required by law, and how the worker who allegedly experienced the harassment, and the alleged harasser where that person is a worker of the employer, will be informed of the results and of any corrective action (32.0.6 (2)).
Investigation and written results. The employer must ensure that an investigation appropriate in the circumstances is conducted into incidents and complaints of workplace harassment, that the worker who allegedly experienced the harassment and the alleged harasser, where the alleged harasser is a worker of the employer, are informed in writing of the results and of any corrective action taken or to be taken, and that the harassment program is reviewed as often as necessary and at least annually (32.0.7 (1)).
Note what that duty is and is not. The Act requires the parties to be informed in writing of the results and of any corrective action. It does not require the investigation report itself to be handed over. Those are two different documents, and treating them as one creates risk in both directions.
A course can teach a worker what workplace harassment is. Only workplace-specific instruction can tell them how these requirements are implemented where they work, and what they are expected to do.
Is free workplace violence and harassment training enough in Ontario?
Free training can be genuinely useful, and it can form part of how an employer meets its instruction duty. If it remains a general course, however, it cannot meet that duty on its own. The same is true of a paid general course.
The limitation has nothing to do with price. A general course, free or paid, does not contain the employer’s own policies, programs, reporting contacts, risk assessment, controls or procedures unless that workplace-specific content has been added. The Act ties the instruction duty to the contents of those policies and programs.
So the question worth asking is not what the course cost. It is what the course covered, and what still has to be covered afterward. That is usually a smaller job than employers expect. The employer may not need to replace the course. It may only need to supplement it with workplace-specific instruction. If you are starting from scratch, a solid general foundation such as the Workplace Violence & Harassment Prevention (Ontario) course is a reasonable place to begin.
What employers must add to general online training
A general course teaches the law: the definitions, the rights and duties of workers, supervisors and employers, and the principles of prevention and reporting. Where that course is current and accurate, the content does not need to be duplicated.
What has to be added is everything the course cannot know:
- Your workplace violence policy and your workplace harassment policy, in the form workers will actually see them
- Who receives a report, by name or by role
- The alternate route for reporting harassment where the employer or supervisor is the alleged harasser
- How a worker summons immediate assistance, and from whom
- The violence risks identified for this workplace, and the controls in place for them
- How workplace harassment incidents and complaints will be investigated, and how the required written outcome notifications will be provided
- What will be kept confidential, and the limits on that
- Any worker-facing precautions or procedures relating to a domestic violence risk, while protecting personal information that workers do not need for their safety
- What supervisors are expected to do when something is reported to them
Workplace-specific content does not require a second course. It can be incorporated into the existing Workplace Violence & Harassment Prevention (Ontario) course or onboarding process, or delivered through a policy briefing, toolbox talk, written briefing or other appropriate instruction. The employer should document who received the instruction, what was covered and when it was delivered. A signature may confirm receipt, but it does not replace the instruction itself.
Do supervisors need different training than workers?
The Act does not prescribe a separate violence and harassment course for supervisors. It requires information and instruction appropriate for the worker, and supervisors carry duties that other workers do not.
A supervisor who will receive complaints needs to know what to do when one arrives, what happens when they are themselves the subject of one, what they may and may not disclose, and at what point the matter leaves their hands. A worker needs to know how to report. A supervisor needs to know how to receive. A general module may provide the common foundation, but supervisors need additional instruction where their responsibilities differ from those of other workers.
An eight-question self-audit for Ontario employers
Answer these honestly. They take about five minutes.
- When was your workplace violence risk assessment last completed or reassessed, and what triggered it?
- Have both policies been reviewed within the past twelve months, with a record of that review?
- Have workers been instructed on how to summon immediate assistance, and can they identify the procedure?
- Does the harassment program provide a route that bypasses the employer or supervisor where that person is the alleged harasser, and have workers been instructed on that route?
- Does the harassment program explain how incidents and complaints will be investigated, and how the worker who allegedly experienced harassment and the alleged harasser, where that person is a worker of the employer, will receive written results and information about corrective action?
- Does the instruction your workers received identify your actual reporting contacts and procedures, or only the law in general?
- Have your supervisors been instructed on what to do when a complaint is brought to them?
- If an inspector attended tomorrow, could you produce or otherwise demonstrate the policies, both programs, the violence risk assessment and reassessments, the instruction delivered, and the required harassment investigation and outcome records?
If any answer is no, not sure, or I believe so, the weakness is probably not the certificate. It is the structure behind it.
How the pieces work together as one system
Look again at the answers that gave you pause. Some reveal a missing document. Others reveal a missing connection, which is harder to see.
A workplace violence risk assessment identifies a hazard, but the control never reaches the program. The program names a reporting route, but the instruction omits it. A policy is reviewed without asking whether the risks, controls or procedures still reflect the workplace.
A functioning system closes the loop. For workplace violence, the assessment informs the controls and procedures, instruction carries them to workers, and incidents or operational changes feed reassessment. For workplace harassment, the written program establishes reporting, investigation, confidentiality and outcome procedures, instruction explains them, and investigations and annual reviews feed improvement. Records show what was done. A broken link weakens everything that follows.
The Act also gives inspectors two relevant order-making powers without requiring a prosecution first.
Under section 55.2, an inspector may require a workplace violence assessment or reassessment to be put in writing. An employer relying on an undocumented assessment may then have to reconstruct and formalize what was considered, what was concluded and whether the assessment remains current.
Under section 55.3, an inspector may order an employer to have a workplace harassment investigation conducted, at the employer’s expense, by an impartial person with the knowledge, experience or qualifications specified by the inspector. The employer may also be required to obtain that person’s written report at its own expense.
These orders do not automatically follow every program weakness. They demonstrate why an employer should not wait for an inspection to formalize its system or to ensure that its investigations are appropriate in the circumstances.
Frequently asked questions
