I want to follow-up on my earlier post on workplace incident reporting at York University. Our HSEWB department, which controls resources and processes related to workplace health and safety at York University, continues to insist that documentation — including workplace incident forms — be hidden behind password protection access.
Hiding health and safety documentation behind password protection is, in my opinion, a violation of the concept of “the right to know.” Search engines and chatbots cannot access these documents when they are hidden in this way. See for yourself. Type “joint health and safety committee” and “york university” into Google and see if the main page for the JHSCs appears. In my tests, it does not.
It’s not just the main JHSC page that is hidden, it’s also many other important health and safety forms and policy documents. That makes it very difficult for workers to educate themselves about health and safety in their workplace.
For instance, are you concerned about assaults on campus? Have you heard, through the rumour mill, that a colleague was physically assaulted in a washroom and want to know more in order to protect yourself? Where should you look for such information? One place would be the incident summaries as they are reported to the Health and Safety Executive Council (HSEC). But you wouldn’t know that because those reports are hidden behind the password protection that surrounds health and safety documents.
I’ve been fighting to open up the documentation for health and safety at York University for a while now. Until recently, if you searched for “workplace incident report” and “york university” it, likewise, would not show up in search engines like Google. The WIR form was locked behind password protection. As of today, August 26, 2024, it appears to be available again, as shown in the screenshot here. That’s a positive development, but it needs to be stated that prior to 2023, it was hidden. It became available publicly, briefly, in 2023 and then became hidden again. In mid-2024, It’s now back.
The fact that such documents are sometimes available, sometimes not, is not appropriate. At York University we need to have a consistent, broadly applied policy that clearly states that health and safety documents, including those associated with reporting, process and policy, should be open, accessible, relevant and responsive. Interestingly, our Risk Management Services department has Hazard Reporting Form that is open and accessible, as are many other of their documents. Risk Management and Health Safety and Employee Well Being (HSWEB) operate out of two different buildings — 4747 Keele for RM and Kinsmen for HSWEB — … maybe they should be getting together to coordinate how to make important H&S documentation accessible and usable by the whole York University community.
Documents related to health and safety need to be easy to find and easy to use. At York University this is not the case. And that is not good for workers. Let’s do better.
Edits
- Oct 8, 2024: Added link to internal (protected) HSWEB page.
James Andrew Smith is a Professional Engineer and Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of York University’s Lassonde School, with degrees in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alberta and McGill University. Previously a program director in biomedical engineering, his research background spans robotics, locomotion, human birth and engineering education. While on sabbatical in 2018-19 with his wife and kids he lived in Strasbourg, France and he taught at the INSA Strasbourg and Hochschule Karlsruhe and wrote about his personal and professional perspectives. James is a proponent of using social media to advocate for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion as well as evidence-based applications of research in the public sphere. You can find him on Twitter. Originally from Québec City, he now lives in Toronto, Canada.