One Good Thing for Safety Training to Come Out of the Pandemic

Yeah, sure. That’s easy for you to say. But for the majority of Canadian employees who are stressed out from COVID and fighting desperately to make ends meet, staying home from work is an unaffordable luxury. The same is true of taking a few hours away from work to get the COVID vaccine.

If you really want to keep employees from coming to work when they’re sick, you gotta give them paid sick leave. But that’s expensive and subject to abuses. Nor is it required under any province’s employment standards laws (the lone exception is PEI where employees get 1 day of paid sick per year after 5 years of employment). And while Trudeau has been talking about legislation requiring employers to provide 10 paid sick days per year, that promise hasn’t and probably won’t come to fruition any time soon.

But some progress—if that’s what you call it—is being made. A couple of weeks ago, Saskatchewan became the first province to provide employees paid leave to get the vaccine; Alberta became the second earlier this week. BC has also adopted vaccine leave, but it’s unpaid. Of course, employers needn’t wait for legislation and can voluntarily adopt a paid vaccination leave policy. Although not cheap, that may be a worthwhile investment, especially if your organization requires employees to get vaccinated or show proof of vaccination.