Leadership Matters
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By Brenda Clark, CHRE

Last fall, HRPA released A New Deal for Ontario’s Changing Workplaces.

A review and recommendations on the Employment Standards Act (ESA) and Labour Relations Act (LRA) that was produced with input from an HRPA-member survey, interviews with HR executives and an examination of what other jurisdictions (including Australia, UK and California) are doing around employment standards.

(For full details, see New HRPA report urges modernization of Employment Standards Act in the Upfront section of this magazine.)

Aimed at assisting the Ontario government to modernize its workplace legislation, the report makes 29 recommendations to help establish a new deal for Ontario business and workers, including making temporary workers permanent employees after a prolonged period with the same employer; and expanding definitions of what constitutes a contractor, subcontractor and temporary worker; and clarifying the relationship between the employer, the client and these various types of workers within the Employment Standards Act.

However, a key recommendation that speaks to me as an HR professional is the recommendation to have designated HR professionals (including Certified Human Resources Professionals (CHRPs), Certified Human Resources Leaders (CHRLs) and Certified Human Resources Executives (CHREs)) review and sign off on regulatory compliance documents to ensure organizations are fulfilling their obligations around employment, labour relations and occupational health and safety standards.

I like this idea for two reasons:

First, from a practical perspective, it means better compliance for organizations – and this is backed up by research HRPA conducted in 2013 around HRPA membership and conviction rates under the ESA. It found that out of 1,015 convictions for ESA violations, none were linked to an employer with an HRPA member on staff.

And second, having designated HR professionals approve and sign off on important workplace compliance documents is yet another mark of professionalism for the HR profession. As this issue’s cover story makes clear, human resources has evolved to the point that it is now a true, regulated profession on the same level as accountant or engineers.

And like important engineering documents such as drawings, specifications or reports require final sign-off approval from a professional engineer (P.Eng.), or public accountants signing off on audit statements, it makes sense to have final approval on workplace regulatory compliance documents from a CHRP, CHRL or CHRE.

For the same reasons the Ontario government granted HRPA regulatory status over its members (access to private employee data, compliance responsibility for employment/OHS regulations and impacts of HR decisions on workers), it is important that designated HR professionals review and sign off on documents that are critical to both organizations and Ontario workers.

Why? Because designated HR professionals – CHRPs, CHRLs and CHREs – have both the education, knowledge and experience to spot irregularities and errors in documents and the professional ethics and spirit of public service to do the right thing on the behalf of all stakeholders.

Brenda Clark, CHRE is a chair of the Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA).

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