Tag Archive for: education

Bullying & Harassment: Your Requirement As An Employer

Workplace bullying and harassment can have significant costs to both employers and employees; it can create a hostile work environment that leads to stress and health issues, absenteeism, loss of productivity, lack of commitment to the company and even legal issues.

Workplace bullying and harassment include any inappropriate conduct or comment by a person towards a worker that the person knew, or reasonably ought to have known, would cause that worker to be humiliated or intimidated.  It excludes any reasonable action taken by the employer or supervisor relating to the management and direction of workers or the place of employment.

Under the Workers Compensation Act:

Employers must:

  • Not engage in bullying and harassment.
  • Develop a bullying and harassment policy statement.
  • Take steps to prevent or minimize bullying and harassment.
  • Develop and implement procedures for reporting incidents and complaints, including procedures for reporting when the employer, supervisor or owner is the alleged bully or harasser.
  • Develop and implement procedures for dealing with incidents or complaints.
  • Inform workers of the policy statement and prevention measures.
  • Train workers and supervisors.
  • Annually review the policy statement and procedures.

While the list of employer responsibilities may seem daunting, WorkSafeBC has provided a wealth of resources to enable employers to comply. 

Following are some simple steps and links to resources to comply with WorksafeBC requirements:

  • Use this WorkSafeBC template to develop a policy statement:
  • Take steps to minimize bullying and harassment:  If an employer is aware of circumstances that present a risk of workplace bullying and harassment, preventative measures must be in place.  For example, in an environment where clients are known to be verbally aggressive, an employer might have a screening process for phone calls, and a policy to escalate angry customers to a manager.
  • Use this WorkSafeBC template to develop reporting procedures:
  • Use this WorkSafeBC template to develop investigation procedures: 
  • Inform workers of the policy statement and prevention measures:  Create a bulletin board that is prominently displayed in the workplace to display the policy statement, reporting procedures and investigative procedures. Make sure each new employee is aware of the bullying and harassment policy as part of their orientation process.
  • Use this Powerpoint presentation for training workers and supervisors.  Make sure to have each employee sign an attendance record that can be kept in their files. 

Once you have established bullying and harassment policies and procedures, make sure you hold an annual meeting to review these with your employees.

Disclaimer: Avisar Chartered Professional Accountant’s blog deals with a number of complex issues in a concise manner; it is recommended that accounting, legal or other appropriate professional advice should be sought before acting upon any of the information contained therein.

Although every reasonable effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this post, no individual or organization involved in either the preparation or distribution of this post accepts any contractual, tortious, or any other form of liability for its contents or for any consequences arising from its use.

Building A Secure Future: Supporting Families With Special Needs

Planning for their children’s financial future is very important to all parents; for families with special needs children, it can involve more complex and emotional decisions. The cost of supporting a special needs child can be more than double the cost of raising a child without special needs. However, some relief may be available to support families to meet their child’s needs. Here are some tips from an investment advisor on how to access those.

While there are many challenges to support your child, the financial aspect can seem daunting to your family. The need to pay for therapies, medical equipment, special programs, along with a parent’s lost income due to time commitments, makes up a large portion of this added cost. If you have a child with special needs, the path to creating a plan to financially support them can be a challenging one that may require the experience and expertise of a financial professional.

As part of your planning, you may wish to learn about help that may be available to you through tax credits, savings vehicles and government programs that support families to meet their child’s needs.

Tax Credits May Be Available

Starting out, families should obtain approval from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to receive the Disability Tax Credit (DTC). This process requires that a medical professional sign off on a government form to establish the child’s eligibility. The DTC provides the parents of a special needs child a transferable credit on their taxes of about $13,000 (in 2018 and assuming child is < 18 years old).

Oftentimes, families may be eligible for the DTC and not even know it. Families may typically associate the DTC with an individual with a visible disability, when in fact, the DTC covers both visible and non-visible medical conditions. For instance, families with loved ones with the following medical conditions may qualify for the DTC: Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Diabetes (Type 1), Down Syndrome. While this list of medical conditions is not exhaustive, the ultimate decision made by CRA will be dependent upon the opinion of a qualified medical professional, on a case-by-case basis.

The Tax Credit Gives Access To Matching Programs

In addition, the DTC allows the family to open a Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP). The RDSP provides access to government matching grant and bonds, similar to a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP). Focusing on the government grant, a family’s contribution to an RDSP of $1,000 a year will be matched by a minimum of $1,000. Also, the family’s contributions along with government bond and grant can be invested in a tax-deferred manner, similar to a Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA). Combined with government incentives, this tax deferral creates the opportunity for the family to build retirement income for their child’s future to offset lifestyle and support expenses.

Government support programs can also include provincial government support. For Ontario residents, this can include the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). The ODSP is accessible once the child reaches the age of 18. The ODSP is a monthly benefit between $1,000 to $2,000 per month depending on the individual’s circumstances, plus medical, dental, vision, education and job training support. The benefit is paid directly to the special needs individual to cover living expenses.

Estate Planning Is A Must

It is critical for parents of special needs children to update their Will and Power of Attorney (POA) documents. Doing this will ensure proper guardianship of their child when they pass away or are unable to care for them. From a financial perspective, there are many opportunities in your estate plan to ensure that your child is provided for. One of the more common and powerful strategies is combining life insurance on the lives of the parents with a Henson Trust in the parents’ Will.

Navigating the details of these programs and plans can be challenging. Despite the complexity, it is important for families to have a plan and to reach out for professional support. Doing so will ensure the family has access to the financial support and peace of mind they require, so they can focus their time and attention on their children.

LINKS OF INTEREST

Disability Tax Credit Application Form (medical professional required to complete): www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/segments/tax-credits-deductions-persons -disabilities/disability-tax-credit/step-step-instructions-filling-form-t2201.html

Disclaimer: Avisar Chartered Professional Accountant’s blog deals with a number of complex issues in a concise manner; it is recommended that accounting, legal or other appropriate professional advice should be sought before acting upon any of the information contained therein.

Although every reasonable effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this post, no individual or organization involved in either the preparation or distribution of this post accepts any contractual, tortious, or any other form of liability for its contents or for any consequences arising from its use.

Building A Learning Ecosystem For Small Organizations

Ecosystems for employee development don’t require fancy technology or expensive custom development. What you need is a thoughtful plan and a culture of collaboration.

WHAT IS A LEARNING ECOSYSTEM?

Simply put, a learning ecosystem is an environment in your business that allows your employees, and possibly your customers, to learn and collaborate in the development of knowledge and capability. In large organizations, this usually involves learning management systems, classroom training or eLearning, and other talent development systems.

But what if you are a small organization with a small but committed group of people and less capability to embrace large, expensive systems or measures? Not to worry! You can still develop a culture of learning and collaboration. There are some key factors to deciding what and how to implement a system, but it doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated.

START WITH ‘WHY’

What value are you trying to create with your learning culture? Who is your primary learner? You may immediately say, “the employees,” but consider their motivations for learning. Are they trying to do their jobs better? Learn about new products or innovations? Change processes or approaches to problems? Manage and motivate? All of these are different contributors and reasons for learning. You may want to create a “persona” for your different categories of learners. A persona is a characterization of your employee and what they see, think, and encounter on a regular basis – both the challenges and the opportunities. Starting with why they want to learn will help you to curate materials or suggest places for them to go to begin their learning journeys.

The second why, of course, is the benefit to your business. Providing an opportunity to build a culture of learning and collaboration will help to foster growth and better understanding of your market and keep your people engaged longer. Think about what you want to accomplish from the perspective of product knowledge, sales capability, safety, leadership or other important elements you want to strengthen within your business.

Once you’ve got an idea of who you are building for, it’s time to determine what you are going to curate, build, acquire, and collaborate on to get the best opportunities for your people. Learning happens when people have questions or curiosity (or both). Most adult learners need to build on their own experiences by tearing down a little of what they pre-conceived about the subject or problem and opening a space to consider alternatives or new information.

FIND A PLACE TO CURATE

So, building a learning ecosystem starts with having a place where your employees can share curiosity, lessons, advice and knowledge. This might be a regular meeting, a spot (electronic or physical, depending on the type of business you have) where they can post valuable information and collaborate, and making these sharing opportunities a regular part of your management coaching and reporting sessions. It can be as simple as creating a space in regular update meetings and assigning a rotation for people to show their work: what they’ve learned, or some insight into an existing product, customer or process. You can curate this in a SharePoint site, a dropbox, or a collaboration site. Include links to relevant and related ideas.

BUT WHAT TO INCLUDE …?

There are plenty of free resources likely available to you within your industry: product updates, manufacturing news, operational effectiveness blogs. There are also white papers and likely research if you are in a professional or technical business. Place these in your ecosystem with links to the original site so that people can explore further if they like. You may even wish to bring in someone you work with – like your accountant, HR contractor, or product sales specialist – to conduct a lunch-and-learn or presentation to your team on a topic relevant to your business. Most professionals are happy to come and speak on their specialized knowledge. Just make sure you focus on what the employees will find useful and what helps them solve problems.

Additionally, you might want to look outside of your industry. Even if you aren’t in their field, many professional associations have free or reasonably priced books, updates, and thought leadership that could apply to your company. For example, CPA Canada has an extensive collection of management and leadership resources that span much farther than just the accounting profession.

You may want to include publicly available learning activities and resources as well. For example, if you live in Toronto or in one of the larger metropolitan areas in Ontario, you can get a learning service from lynda.com for free as long as you have a library card! That’s right! Your local library is a great source for learning. Lynda (now owned by LinkedIn) is a fantastic source of video-based learning for many office applications, project management, some finance and leadership applications and even sales and business planning fundamentals. If you aren’t in a place that has this in the library system, you can access lynda.com through LinkedIn, or straight from the Lynda site, for a reasonable price.

If you want a more organized learning experience, you can try MOOCs (massive open online courses) through a site like Coursera or EdX. These are open courses with timings and facilitators to help guide coursework. A huge selection of courses can be found in these places, usually presented by major universities or well-known experts in the field. Quite a good list of these places and courses is the MOOC List (www.mooc-list.com), which can help you find the right courses for your employees or yourself.

The key to an ecosystem is that it is a system. You should think about your employees, your organizational goals, and your cultural aspirations for your organization. Pair this with a place for sharing and collaborating on development and problem-solving. Finally, don’t forget to go outside of your own profession or core industry to gather and curate learning materials that will help you solve problems or challenges from a different perspective.

Disclaimer: Avisar Chartered Professional Accountant’s blog deals with a number of complex issues in a concise manner; it is recommended that accounting, legal or other appropriate professional advice should be sought before acting upon any of the information contained therein.

Although every reasonable effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this post, no individual or organization involved in either the preparation or distribution of this post accepts any contractual, tortious, or any other form of liability for its contents or for any consequences arising from its use.

Privacy And Online Behavioural Advertising

Online behavioural advertising (OBA) is becoming an increasingly popular form of advertising. If your business engages in OBA, it is important to understand the privacy risks associated with this practice.

If you have ever surfed the internet to look up a particular topic such as “Caribbean vacations” or “laptops” only to find that this same topic reappears in advertisements on other websites, then you likely have been the target of OBA.

While there are many benefits to OBA and online advertising generally, such as allowing businesses to compete with international and online companies, it carries with it certain privacy risks that businesses should be mindful of when engaging in this type of advertising.

WHAT IS ONLINE BEHAVIOURAL ADVERTISING?

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) defines OBA as “tracking consumers’ online activities, across sites and overtime in order to deliver advertisements targeted to their inferred interests.”[1]

As people use the internet, they leave behind a rich trail of personal information. Some of this is deliberate, such as the posting of photos and comments. However, other times it is not. Through the use of certain technologies, businesses can keep track of your web browsing activity such as search terms used, web pages visited, advertisements viewed, articles read, purchases made and even your location. Businesses are tapping into this abundant source of information and using sophisticated data analytics to build personal profiles of individuals in order to deliver specific advertising to them that is tailored to their interests.

PRIVACY ISSUES

In Canada, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, SC 2000, c 5 [(PIPEDA) or equivalent privacy legislation in certain provinces] governs the collection, use or disclosure of personal information.

Personal information is defined as “information about an identifiable individual” [s. 2(1)]. The OPC has stated that it will generally consider information collected for the purpose of OBA to constitute personal information.[2]

Pursuant to privacy legislation, an individual’s consent is required for the collection, use or disclosure of personal information. Privacy legislation does recognize that the form of consent can vary. For example, express (opt-in) consent is typically appropriate for sensitive information and implied (opt-out) consent for less sensitive information. The OPC has stated that implied consent may be a reasonable form of consent for OBA, provided that certain conditions are met including, but not limited to:

  • making the individual aware of the practice in a clear and understandable manner before collection occurs; and
  • providing them with the ability to easily opt out of the practice with immediate and persistent effect.[3]

However, the OPC has cautioned that its 2011 OBA Guidance does not render opt-out consent the default for all OBA and that careful consideration of all the circumstances must be taken into account. On April 7, 2015, the OPC published its findings that a mobility company’s Relevant Advertising Program (RAP), which consisted of using customers’ network usage and account / demographic information to serve targeted advertising, violated PIPEDA.

While the RAP providers did not have access to information that identified particular customers, and while the company gave customers the option to opt out of the RAP, the OPC nevertheless found that “the sheer breadth of information being used or contemplated for the RAP… renders such information more sensitive when compiled” and therefore express opt-in consent was appropriate for the use of such sensitive information.

In addition to the sensitivity of the information, the OPC also considered the reasonable expectations of the company’s customers. It found that the company used its customers’ information for the purpose of delivering its primary paid services and therefore its customers would reasonably expect it to obtain express opt-in consent for the use of their information for the new secondary purpose of OBA.

As a result of the OPC’s findings, class action lawsuits were launched in Ontario and Quebec against the mobility company and its affiliate claiming $750 million in damages for, among other things, breach of privacy (the tort of intrusion upon seclusion) arising from the unauthorized use of consumers’ personal information for the RAP.

BUSINESS TAKEAWAYS

The following four strategies will help businesses comply with their obligations under privacy law when engaging in OBA.

Obtain appropriate consent (express or implied). Given the OPC’s findings against the mobility company, businesses using OBA should consider whether seemingly innocent, non-identifying pieces of information they are collecting could be considered sensitive information when compiled together. If so, this would require express consent.

Provide clear information regarding OBA practices. Privacy legislation requires that businesses obtain meaningful consent. Accordingly, businesses should provide users with clear information regarding their OBA practices. This should include what information is collected for OBA, how it is collected and what it is used for. This information should be easily accessible – such as by way of advertising icons – rather than buried in a website’s extensive privacy policy. 

Provide user-friendly opt-out mechanisms. Businesses using OBA should provide users with a user-friendly ability to opt-out of the OBA practice. Again, this could be in the form of advertising icons placed directly on the advertisement which, if clicked, provide a choice to opt-out.

Safeguard information. Once information is collected, businesses should have in place adequate physical, organizational and technical measures for safeguarding the information that is appropriate to its level of sensitivity.

[1]       Guidelines on Privacy and Online Behavioural Advertising published December 2011 (2011 OBA Guidelines).

[2]       2011 OBA Guidelines and the OPC’s Policy Position on Online Behavioural Advertising published December 2015 (2015 Policy Position).

[3]       2011 OBA Guidelines and 2015 Policy Position.

Disclaimer: Avisar Chartered Professional Accountant’s blog deals with a number of complex issues in a concise manner; it is recommended that accounting, legal or other appropriate professional advice should be sought before acting upon any of the information contained therein.

Although every reasonable effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this post, no individual or organization involved in either the preparation or distribution of this post accepts any contractual, tortious, or any other form of liability for its contents or for any consequences arising from its use.