Canadian Government Executive - Volume 25 - Issue 04

October/November 2019// Canadian Government Executive / 13 EMPLOYMENT al Safety are usually not hazard-specific, and on their own, do not guarantee a sufficient level of health and safety protection for workers. 3 Performance-based (outcome) rules. Employers with in-house OHS expertise are generally well- positioned to work with performance or outcome-based rules as in-house expertise can be leveraged to achieve the stated OHS outcome. These rules support innovation as employers have the flexibility to deter- mine the most efficient and cost-efficient way to comply with the rule. However, small employers who do not have in-house OHS expertise may find it challenging to work with this type of rule to meet the de- sired health and safety outcomes. 4 Specification-based(prescriptive) rules. Specification or prescriptive rules have an advantage of being easy to follow. But, they do not offer flex- ibility for employers who might have a different way of achieving the same out- comes. Hence, prescriptive rules do not support innovation. To remedy this situa- tion, governments will sometimes create an avenue for employers to request an acceptance or variance to achieve com- pliance through an alternative approach. However, even with this allowance, it still represents a barrier for employers, as there is an administrative burden associat- ed with requesting an acceptance or vari- ance, which expends both employer and government resources. Further, there can be a general perception that specification- Collectively, there are six categories of ohs rules plus an adminis- trative category, which represent the seven building blocks of ohs regulation… to be most effective, ohs regula- tion should contain the optimimum mix of these building blocks based rules represent regulatory burden since they tend to result in a large volume of rules that need to be followed. 5 Third-party technical standards. Third-party technical standards can be highly detailed. They often delve deep into OHS issues and provide extensive information on how to address work site hazards. Third-party standards are often created by not-for-profit non- government organizations that need to charge a cost-recovery fee to the end-users of a standard. Hence, a key disadvantage of third-party standards is they are not al- ways freely available to end-users. 6 Non-regulatory guidance docu- ments. Non-regulatory guidance documents supplement legislated requirements and offer practical guid- ance that is not usually possible to provide through regulation. Guidance documents can be written in plain language with the end-user in mind and focus on specific in- dustry sectors or on specific job site haz- ards. Further, non-regulatory guidance doc- uments can be useful if a government opts for emphasis on performance-based rules with aims to reduce regulatory burden. 7 Administrative items. The seventh building block is separate from the above six because it is not a type of rule per se. This building block is for gen- eral administrative items, such as the pow-