Being fit for duty goes beyond the new cannabis legislation - Alliance Borealis - Canadian Energy News, Top Headlines, Commentaries, Features & Events

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Since the legalization of recreational cannabis in Canada back in October, workers and employers alike have worried about how this would affect an individual’s ability to be fit for duty.

But being fit for duty is much broader than the new cannabis legislation and other important factors are being left out of the conversation. Employers and workers should be aware that in addition to cannabis and alcohol, there are other causes of impairment (e.g., prescription and non-prescription drugs, fatigue, lack of physical capacity). It’s up to management and workers to identify contributors to impairment at their worksites and in their own personal lives and ensure everyone arrives and remains fit for duty while at work.

We understand that it’s not as easy as it sounds.

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in the US, fit for duty means that “an individual is in a physical, mental, and emotional state which enables the employee to perform the essential tasks of his or her work assignment in a manner which does not threaten the safety or health of oneself, co-workers, property, or the public at large”.

While discussions about being fit for duty often focus on managing alcohol and drugs, there are other matters that must be addressed when evaluating a worker’s fitness for duty.

Energy Safety Canada (ESC) includes the following in the development of its new Fit for Duty guideline.

Physical Factors such as physical demands, vision and hearing
Physiological Factors such as fatigue, alcohol and drugs, workplace exposures
Psychosocial Factors such as risk tolerance, culture, and emotional state
Communication Factors such as hand signals, common language, understanding

Additional examples, also from the oil and gas industry, show how complicated assessing fitness for duty can be. They identify a number of unusual examples that could affect an individual’s fitness for duty:

A worker with a pacemaker working around magnetic pumps
A worker who is pregnant and could be exposed to reproductive toxins (e.g., toluene)
A worker who can’t eat or drink during the day due to religious constraints
A worker who has a valid driver’s license, but reduced vision
A worker with reduced ability to handle stress because of family problems
A worker with a combination of mental, physical, and physiological stressors

It’s clear that being fit for duty isn’t always as simple as modifying consumption of alcohol and drugs (recreational, prescription or illegal).

To assist our clients in determining worker fitness for duty, we created a fit for duty practice that can be used to evaluate and manage fitness for duty. Here are a few excerpts:

A statement of the company’s expectation

Our company requires that all employees and contractors arrive and remain fit for duty while on company business, on company worksites and when on scheduled call. Fit for duty means being physically, psychologically and mentally competent and able to safely and effectively perform assigned duties and responsibilities without any limitations, including those caused by a variety of factors, not just the use or after-effects of alcohol or drugs. Working when you are not fit creates a potential risk to your safety and the safety of others near you.

It includes a detailed desription of what being fit for duty includes, outside of the obvious compliance with the company’s Alcohol and Drug Policy. We also provide over 100 policies and procedures throughout our STELLAR HSE Management & Tracking software, to assist employers and employees to deal more effectively with a wide variety of Health, Safety and Environmental issues.

Check out our blog for more guidance on for ensuring that workers are fit for duty.

ABCanada – Who we are and what we do

At Alliance Borealis Canada Corp. (ABCanada), our roots are in workplace health, safety and environmental (HSE) programs. Since 1997, we have been involved in a number of major HSE projects all over the world and have used the knowledge we’ve gained there and also from our Canadian experience to create our cloud-based, expertly designed software for reporting and tracking incidents and a variety of leading safety indicators. Our goal is to change the way you see your HSE partner by providing solutions that work at every level of your company and make it easier for you to improve safety performance. Ask us about our newest release, STELLAR HSE Management & Tracking. Call us at 1.888.295.2808 or request a demo!