Step 1: Safety basics

Watch the video and review UFV's six safety basics before you start your employment.

1. Occupational health and safety policy

Recognizing its commitment to a workplace free of workplace injuries, accidents, and occupational diseases, the university has established and maintains a health and safety program that is in accordance with the Workers Compensation Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation.

This program includes but is not limited to:

• ensuring resources and support are available to ensure the planning, budgeting, direction, and implementation of university activities provide the highest priority to ensuring the provision of safe working conditions and job safety practices;
• providing instruction and training to supervisors and employees in the safe performance of their work;
• reviewing health and safety activities and trends in order to establish and maintain best practices; and,
• ensuring necessary preventative and corrective actions, including the provision and maintenance of protective equipment and clothing, regular site inspections, and the investigation of reported incidents. 

The university requires all employees to work in compliance with this policy and with the controls and procedures developed to support it.

Roles

Employees will ensure their health and safety by understanding and following established safe work procedures, using appropriate protective equipment, correcting or reporting any safety and health hazard and performing their work in a safe manner.

Supervisors will ensure employees have necessary information, resources and training and will ensure employees adhere to measures and procedures developed to prevent workplace injuries, accidents and occupational diseases.

2. Rights and responsibilities at the workplace

At the workplace, everyone has varying levels of responsibility for health and safety. You should know and understand your responsibilities and three key rights.

Your rights

• The right to know about the hazards in the workplace.
• The right to participate in health and safety activities in the workplace.
• The right to refuse unsafe work without getting punished or dismissed.

At UFV your personal safety is our highest priority. You must not carry out any work process or operate or cause to be operated any tool, appliance or equipment if you have reasonable cause to believe that to do so would create an undue hazard to the health and safety of any person.

If you observe a situation that is unsafe, immediately report the circumstances of the unsafe condition to your supervisor or manager. In these situations, we will immediately investigate the matter and ensure that any unsafe condition is remedied without delay, or we will talk about how to ensure that you are safe when performing the work duty.

Your responsibilities

You play an important role in making sure you and your co-workers stay healthy and safe on the job.

• Be alert to hazards. Report them immediately to your supervisor or Campus Security.
• Follow safe work procedures and act safely in the workplace at all times.
• Use the protective clothing, devices and equipment provided. Be sure to wear them correctly.
• Get treatment quickly should an injury happen on the job.
• Never work under the influence of alcohol, drugs or any other substance.

3. Should an accident or injury occur, how do I report it?

Sometimes people are reluctant to report an accident or injury. We encourage you to take the time to report as it makes us all safer at work.

The Risk & Safety incident form should be used to report:

• all first aid incidents;
• university work or premises related incidents and ill health;
• acts of violence (physical and verbal abuse and threats to staff, serious incidents involving students);
• injuries arising from road traffic accidents while at work; and
• non-injury incidents that had the potential to cause harm (dangerous occurrences or "near misses").

Report the incident to your supervisor as soon as possible and send completed reports electronically to ehs@ufv.ca and your supervisor for follow-up. By reporting promptly, UFV will initiate the appropriate support processes to support you and your recovery if injured.  

Certain serious incidents must be immediately reported to WorkSafeBC. The supervisor or another individual with knowledge of the incident must contact Environmental Health & Safety (EHS), Risk & Safety as soon as possible for assistance with reporting to WorkSafeBC if the incident meets any of the following descriptions:

• Serious injury or death of a worker
• Major structural failure or collapse of a building, tower, crane, hoist, temporary construction support system or excavation
• Major release of a hazardous substance
• Fire or explosion that had potential for causing serious injury to a worker

4. Accessing First Aid on campus

In the event of an emergency, please call 9-911 from a UFV phone for police, fire, and/or ambulance assistance. After calling 911, call the Security Operation Centre at 1-855-282-7770 (local 7770) so that we can direct emergency responders to assist you.

Campus First Aid: 1-855-282-7770 (local 7770 from a UFV phone)

Locations:

• Abbotsford campus, Security office - B120a
• CEP campus, Security office - A1115
• Trades & Technology Centre, Security office - T1108
• Mission Heritage Park Centre, Administration office - D135

5. Working alone and staying safe

UFV has support systems in place to ensure that employees working alone are safe:

• Second person or buddy system
• Personal check by another person
• Periodic telephone check
• Scheduled check-in times
• Security systems

To learn more about the working alone program contact: ehs@ufv.ca.

6. Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS)

Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System 2015 (WHMIS) is Canada's national chemical hazard communication standard. Under WHMIS, workers have the right to receive information about each hazardous product they use. The goal of WHMIS is to reduce injury and disease by communicating specific health and safety information about hazardous products to workers. The key elements of the system are labeling, Safety Data Sheets (SDS), and education and training.

Safety Data Sheets (SDS)

For information on how to login to the SDS database, please see UFV SDS Poster available on UFV public drive (internal only). To access the poster:

1. Open the public drive folder.
2. Double click on EHS Program folder.
3. Double click on WHMIS folder.

WHMIS training

Two online training courses are available via Blackboard:

• Basic WHMIS 2015 — for employees who may be exposed or have the potential to be exposed to hazardous products at the workplace (i.e., administrative functions, business support services, etc.).

• WHMIS 2015 — for employees who use, store, handle or dispose of hazardous products at the workplace.

How to self-enrol in WHMIS course

1. Login to Basic WHMIS 2015 or WHMIS 2015 (ignore the error message).
2. Click on +Enroll in the left-hand side navigation menu. On mobile devices, you will need to expand the navigation menu by clicking on the navigation arrow above the error message.
3. Click on Login in.
4. Log into Blackboard login using your myUFV username (employee ID number) and password.

Personal safety resources

Learn more about the additional resources provided by UFV Security Services: 

• UFV alert emergency notification system
• Building evacuation
• Safe walk program
• Lost and found

Verify that you reviewed the safety basics

Please complete the following form to verify that you have taken the mandatory training and reviewed the information about UFV safety basics (if you don't, we will just annoy you by following up).