On June 15, 2010, new legislation came into place amending the Occupational Health and Safety Act. As a result, employers now have some due diligence to do around employee safety in the areas of violence and workplace harassment.  At the very least employers are required to:

• Conduct an assessment to determine potential violence and harassment threats in the workplace
• Review and consult with the occupational health and safety committee to review results of the assessment
• Create policies and procedures in conjunction with the occupational health and safety committee on how to reduce potential threats, and what to do should violence or harassment incidents occur
• Train all staff in the  new policies and procedures
• Continually monitor and mitigate threats of violence and harassment in the workplace
• Create a reporting mechanism to monitor potential and actual acts of violence and workplace harassment

If your organization has yet to make these changes to your HR practices, technically you are in noncompliance of the act. Other issues affecting your organization as a result of this legislation include changes in refusing to work, reporting to the Ministry of Labor, and the potential of third-party negligence. Domestic violence is also affected by this legislation in some ways.

If you need assistance with Bill 168 compliance, we can provide you with training and policy assistance contact the T-R Group Inc.

Dr. Vern Belos, LLM, CHRP

Sr. Consultant

The T-R Group Inc.

Welcome to The T-R Group Inc. Coaching Blog.  My name is Colleen Carruthers and I’ve been coaching and teaching coaching for a number of years.  I was first introduced to coaching when I worked as Management and Sales Trainer for The Body Shop Canada. 

When I was first coaching, we asked questions, listened and most of the time we offered the solution – much like a consultant.  Then, as coaching became more standardized, pure coaching was based on asking questions, listening and facilitating the conversation in a way that the coachee came up with their own answer.  Now, in the last edition of Coaching Magazine the focus was back on how coaching needs to be a combination of coaching and consulting for executives to benefit from coaching.  The one thing that seems to stay consistent over the years, is the importance of asking helpful questions.

So, for the next few weeks, I want to focus on ‘powerful questions’.  Each week I will post some new information about questions.

What we all know…

 Listening and Questioning are the foundation of a helpful coaching session.  Coaching questions start with What, How, Who, When, etc., and we avoid the ‘Why’ questions as much as possible. While the Why question is very helpful in process improvement, it is not helpful in people improvement.

What might be new to some…

Sometimes coaches get caught up in wanting to ask the brilliant question and they stop focusing as much on listening.  I know I have done this many times over the years.  One way to stop yourself from focusing on having a question ready is to focus on listening for a key word or two as your coachee is answering your previous question. 

The key here is to listen for the key word(s) and use them to create the next question.  You listen, hopefully jot down or take not of a key word, take a moment to create a question with this word(s) in it.  Generally, I ask the coaches to try this at least three times in the conversation. You will be surprised at how easy it is to create a question that is simple and meaningful from the coachees key word.

When I have people practice this in a class, they often tell me they find it difficult and simplistic.  I’ve actually been shocked at the negative reactions i get to this activity.  However, every time I ask the coachees what the session was like they tell me they really felt heard.  And, they generally find the coaches questions very helpful.

I challenge you to try this technique and let me know how it worked for you.

Colleen