01
What Is a COR, and Why Does Hazard Assessment Matter?
A Certificate of Recognition (COR) shows that an Alberta employer runs a sound safety system. The standard is set under the Partnerships in Injury Reduction program. Finding hazards and controlling them sit at the core of it.
Under the program, COR holders who keep claim costs below target can earn up to 20% off their WCB rate.
02
How Does a COR Audit Check Hazard Assessment?
The province's guide to building a safety system says audits use three kinds of evidence: interviews with staff, a review of documents, and observation of the workplace. Your records, your crew and your floor all need to line up.
Each Certifying Partner sets its own audit tool and scoring, so ask yours for the current version. What follows is what the province's guide says a strong system shows.
03
What a Strong Hazard Assessment Shows
An inventory of jobs, the number of workers in each, and the tasks in each job. Hazards named for each task. Risk ranked so the worst tasks are handled first. Workers involved in finding and assessing hazards. People trained to run assessments. Reviews when the work changes.
On the control side, the guide looks for controls chosen with engineering first and protective equipment last, workers involved in setting them, and proof the controls are used.
04
What the OHS Code Asks Every Employer
Part 2 of the OHS Code asks employers to assess a work site before work begins, prepare a report of the results and the controls, date it, and keep it available at the site. The assessment is repeated at reasonable intervals and when work changes. Affected workers must be involved.
For lifting and handling, Part 14 adds what to look at: the load's weight, size and shape, how often it is moved, and how.
05
A Plain Template for Lifting Tasks
Copy this into your system, one row per task. Keep the columns the same across the site so tasks can be compared and ranked.
| Field | What to write |
|---|---|
| Job and task | The job, the task, where it happens, and how many workers do it. |
| Load | Weight, size and shape, and times moved per shift. |
| Movement | Start height, end height, reach, carry distance, twisting or bending. |
| What we saw | Trunk lean, knee alignment, balance and pace, from observation or video. |
| Risk rank | How likely an injury is and how often the task is done. |
| Controls | Engineering first, then procedures and training, then protective equipment. |
| Workers involved | Names or roles of the workers who took part. |
| Assessed by | The trained person who did the assessment, and the date. |
| Workers told | How and when the crew was told about the controls. |
| Next review | The date, or the change that will trigger a review. |
| Follow-up check | Date checked after the controls went in, and what changed. |
An auditor reads your records, talks to your crew and walks your floor. All three should tell the same story.
06
An Example Row
Job: warehouse associate. Task: moving cases from a floor pallet to a waist-high conveyor, many times a shift. Load: boxed cases, two sizes. Movement: lift from the floor, short twist to the conveyor. What we saw: deep forward lean on the low layers, more twisting late in the shift. Risk rank: high. Controls: pallet lift table to keep cases near waist height, then a refresher on turning the feet. Follow-up check: two weeks after the lift table went in.
This is a made-up example to show the format. Use your own tasks, counts and findings.
07
How to Keep It Current
Review a task when anything about it changes: the product, the line speed, the layout, the equipment or the crew. Review it after a worker reports symptoms, as section 211 asks. The province's guide also suggests reviewing assessments and controls at least once a year.
Date every change. An auditor will look for records that match what they see on the floor today.
08
Gaps Worth Checking Before an Audit
Tasks on the floor that are missing from your job and task list. Assessments with no date, or dates more than a year old. Risk ranks that are blank or all the same. Controls that list training but no change to the task. No sign that workers took part. No follow-up check after a control went in.
Each of these is easy to fix with a short walk and an hour of updates.
09
Help Your Crew Answer Interview Questions
Audit interviews ask workers about hazards in their own tasks and the controls in place. Workers who helped with the assessment can answer in their own words. Share each task's assessment with the people who do it, and walk through the controls on the floor.
10
Where a Phone Video Helps
The "What we saw" and "Follow-up check" fields are the hardest to fill well from memory. A short phone video of the task gives you a dated record you can replay.
GRW Movement reads the video and measures trunk lean, knee alignment, left and right balance, and pace. You get a written report per task to attach to the template. The video is deleted once it is read.