What Does Workplace Safety Mean?

Introduction

Workplace safety means that individuals in a workplace are reasonably protected from harm. This includes protection from physical, emotional, and psychological harm. Thus, workplace safety includes three core components.

Physical Safety

Physical safety includes protection from physical harm in the workplace (i.e., factors that pose a risk of injury or death, or otherwise negatively impact our physical health). Examples of unsafe conditions include extreme temperature, poor air quality, noise, and radiation.

Emotional Safety

Emotional safety involves the protection from emotional harm in the workplace (i.e., factors that negatively impact our emotional well-being).

Psychological Safety

Psychological safety means the freedom to show up (i.e., express our identities) and engage with others at work (e.g., propose new ideas, seek feedback, report problems) as ourselves, without fear of negative consequences.

It is important to note that your rights to emotional and psychological safety are as valid as your right to physical safety in the workplace and there is an important distinction to make between the two.

For a workplace to be physically safe, individuals must be aware of and protected from hazards that endanger their physical wellbeing.

For a workplace to be emotionally and psychologically safe, individuals must be free from harassment and discrimination.

What Defines a Workplace and Where is it?

In the modern economy, work can take place in both physical and virtual environments. The workplace might refer to a physical building or office space, a virtual environment (e.g., Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, email), or a hybrid combination of both. In short, the workplace is wherever you are employed to be working!

Regardless of whether you work in an in-person, virtual, or hybrid work environment, you have the right to freedom from harassment and discrimination.

All forms of workplace safety are legally protected by the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) under the Ontario Human Rights Code (or “the Code”, for short). If you are working outside of Ontario, you still have rights to workplace safety – consult your relevant provincial legislation for details. If you are an international student working in Canada, you can visit Employment Rights and Obligations for Foreign Nationals to learn more about your employment rights and obligations.

Your Rights in the Workplace

There are three important things you should know about when it comes to your rights in the workplace from the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) (Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) | Ontario.Ca, n.d.).

Select the accordion tabs to learn about your rights from the OHSA.

Open/Close All

When it comes to physical safety in the workplace, all workers in Ontario (including students completing a co-op or internship, etc.) have three basic rights:

The right to know about present health and safety hazards.
The right to refuse work if it endangers your health and safety.
The right to participate and make recommendations about health and safety in your workplace.

You have a right to equal treatment and freedom from harassment and discrimination based on the following protected grounds of the Ontario Human Rights Code:

Age
Ancestry, colour, race
Citizenship
Ethnic origin
Place of origin
Creed
Disability
Family status
Marital status (including single status)
Gender identity and gender expression
Record of offences
Sex (including pregnancy and breastfeeding)
Sexual orientation

Your right to safety and equal treatment based on the OHSA protected grounds not only exists in the workplace, but extends to all parts of the employment process, including:

Job applications
Recruitment
Training
Transfers and promotions
Apprenticeship terms
Dismissal and layoffs
Pay, hours of work, overtime, shift work, holidays, and benefits
Discipline and performance evaluations

While some of these rights may seem obvious or are more apparent than others, other rights may be unknown or may not come as quickly to mind. Knowing your rights in the workplace enables you to identify and protect them if or when they are being violated, giving you greater agency to advocate for yourself.

Important Workplace Safety Definitions

To be able to identify threats to your emotional and/or psychological safety, you first need to be aware of how harassment and discrimination are defined. As a legal document, the Ontario Human Rights Code explicitly prohibits harassment and discrimination based on any of the protected grounds mentioned and provides a legal definition of these terms. Below you will learn the legal and plain language definitions of these concepts to better understand your rights. If you have questions or require further clarification after reviewing these definitions, you are encouraged to connect with the resources provided under Section 2: Workplace Safety Supports, Resources, and Disclosure.

Compare the legal and plain language definitions of harassment and discrimination.

Harassment

Legal Definition

Harassment is defined by the Code as “engaging in a course of vexatious comment or conduct that is known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome” We can break down this definition for a clearer understanding of what safety means in this context:

A course of = typically happening more than once, or as part of an ongoing pattern (note: depending on the form and/or severity of the harassment, the harmful conduct need not necessarily happen more than once to be considered harassment)
Vexatious = causing a negative reaction
Unwelcome = the behaviour is unwanted by the person on the receiving end
Ought reasonably to be known = regardless of whether the behaviour is intentional or unintentional

Plain Definition

In plain language, harassment can be defined as “unwanted conduct in the workplace that results in physical, emotional, and/or psychological harm”

Discrimination

Legal Definition

Discrimination is characterized by the OHRC in three components:

“Not individually assessing the unique merits, capacities, and circumstances of a person.
Instead, making stereotypical assumptions based on a person’s presumed traits.
Having the impact of excluding persons, denying benefits, or imposing burdens."

Plain Definition

In taking the three elements from the legal definition, discrimination basically refers to unfair treatment of an individual or group. Regardless of whether a person in the workplace or a workplace practice is responsible, if persons receive unequal treatment based on a Code-protected ground, it is considered discrimination. In plain language, discrimination can be defined as “treating a person or group unfairly based on their identity, social location, and/or stereotypes or assumptions.”

Poisoned Environment

Two people with concerned expressions sitting beside each other at a work desk and a colleague standing behind them with their arms extended around them.

A poisoned environment is one in which harassment and/or discrimination, based on Code-protected ground, has resulted in a workplace that feels emotionally and/or psychologically unsafe for an individual or group. The term toxic environment may also be used to refer to an unsafe workplace that has resulted from a broader range of harmful behaviour not necessarily outlined in the OHRC.

The OHRC doesn’t necessarily outline all behaviours that may result in a toxic workplace environment, but that doesn’t mean these behaviours are not considered harassment and/or discrimination.

Compare the definitions of a poisoned environment to a toxic environment.

Poisoned Environment

OHRC defines a poisoned environment as:

“a form of discrimination and can arise from even a single incident. It may be created by the comments or actions of any person, regardless of [their] status. The comments or conduct do not have to be directed at a particular individual.”

Toxic Environment

A toxic environment (a result of harassment/discrimination) can be defined as:

“a workplace environment that negatively impacts the physical, emotional, and/or psychological safety of an individual or individuals; can be created by even a single incidence of harassment, even if the harassment isn’t targeted at a specific person.”

Harassment and discrimination, as defined by the OHRC, are always against the law and should always be taken seriously, even if these cases rarely escalate to a court of law in Ontario. However, like a toxic work environment, harassment and discrimination need not always be based on a Code-protected ground. The Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA), which applies to most employers in Ontario, prohibits both Code-based harassment/discrimination, as well as a broader range of harmful behaviour sometimes referred to as psychological or personal harassment.

The Spectrum of Safety

Harassment and discrimination come in many different forms. Above all, it's important to remember that it is the impact on the affected individual(s) that matters when determining whether harassment or discrimination is occurring in the workplace. What this means is that:

Your subjective interpretation of the behaviour holds the most weight.
It does not matter whether the emotional/psychological harm being caused is intentional or unintentional.
You do not have to outwardly object to harassment or discrimination for the behaviour to be considered a violation of the Code.
Even a single incident, depending on the form and/or severity of the behaviour, can constitute harassment or discrimination.

Emotional and psychological safety means something different for everyone. Workplace conduct that seems harmless to one person may be deeply harmful to another. This is why perspective and impact matter most when it comes to cases of harassment or discrimination.

What Does Harassment and/or Discrimination Look Like in the Workplace?

There are many forms of harassment and/or discrimination in the workplace and each can exist on a spectrum of severity and scale. Both harassment and discrimination can be further broken down into specific categories. Harassment can be categorized as verbal, visual, and/or physical, while discrimination can be categorized as direct, subtle, by association, or systemic/institutional.

Harassment

Verbal Harassment

A comment that puts someone down or spreads a rumor.

Visual Harassment

A rude meme being shared that targets a person or group protected under the Code.

Physical Harassment

Blocking someone’s safe exit from a situation, pushing, groping, massaging, forcing hugs, etc.

Discrimination

Direct

A result of a person treating another individual or group unfairly, or a result of a workplace rule, standard, or requirement that results in unfair treatment.

Subtle

Workplace circumstances that may seem harmless, but when taken in a larger context amount to unfair treatment of an individual or group.

By Association

Unfair treatment of an individual based on their relationship with another individual or group.

Systemic/Institutional

Policies and practices that may seem harmless at a high level but result in discrimination against individuals or groups within systems, institutions, organizations, and workplaces.

Harassment and discrimination can also be based on many individual factors including race, gender, sex, age, religion, or disability. If harassment is of a sexual nature, it is considered sexual harassment. Harassment based on gender may also be considered sexual harassment. An important detail to note about harassment and discrimination is that some of these different forms can overlap and intersect.

Select the accordion tabs for definitions and examples of harassment/discrimination.

Open All/Close All

The act of intimidating, offending, harming or racially profiling an individual or group based on their ethnic origin, colour, race, religion, or nationality.

Examples include but are not limited to:

Racial slurs
Making comments, jokes, or sharing offensive memes based on racial stereotypes

Unwanted and harmful conduct related to sex or sexual orientation – often (but not always) based on power imbalances that exist in the workplace, sometimes of a quid pro quo (“this for that”) nature.