In workplaces across the nation, a complex and pressing challenge is emerging at the intersection of employee safety and individual human rights, forcing organizations to navigate a delicate balance between two fundamental obligations. This issue is particularly stark in educational settings, where the duty to ensure a safe learning and working environment collides with the mandate to support students with diverse neurological and mental health needs. A 2023 survey from the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation revealed that 35 percent of teachers had experienced violence or abuse from students within the past five years, a trend echoed by a 2025 report showing an exponential increase in incidents of students punching, kicking, and throwing objects at educators. These statistics paint a picture not of isolated incidents, but of a foreseeable workplace hazard that employers are legally bound to control. When a neurodivergent student, perhaps dealing with ADHD or trauma, becomes overwhelmed and reacts with physical aggression, the teacher and educational assistants face a dual imperative: they must protect themselves and other students from harm while simultaneously upholding the rights and dignity of the struggling child. This scenario encapsulates a broader question for all employers: how can an organization fulfill its duty to prevent physical and psychological injury without compromising its commitment to inclusion and accommodation?
1. Defining the Intersecting Legal Obligations
The responsibility of an employer under occupational health and safety (OHS) laws is both a legal and ethical imperative that cannot be understated or transferred. These regulations mandate that employers take proactive steps to protect all employees from foreseeable physical and psychological harm, a duty that extends to preventing workplace violence. This obligation is foundational and cannot be delegated to individual workers by simply providing training and expecting them to manage complex, high-risk situations on their own. The duty of care requires that protective measures be embedded at the policy and administrative levels, ensuring that systemic supports are in place to create a genuinely safe environment for everyone. Failure to meet these minimal OHS obligations can have severe consequences, leading not only to profound physical and psychological injuries for employees—including acute stress, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress injuries—but also to significant legal and financial liability for the organization. In the modern workplace, safety is not a secondary consideration to be balanced against other priorities; it is a non-negotiable prerequisite for a functional and ethical operation. This legal framework sets a clear expectation that organizational leaders are ultimately accountable for creating and maintaining a workplace free from uncontrolled hazards.
On the other side of this legal equation lies the compelling mandate of human rights legislation, which guarantees that all individuals, including learners with disabilities, are protected from discrimination and have a right to access essential services like education. This principle is reinforced by provincial education acts, which affirm that all children are entitled to a public education tailored to their needs. However, a critical distinction must be made: the duty to accommodate a person’s disability-related needs does not obligate an employer to expose other workers or individuals to uncontrolled hazards. The perceived tension between these two duties often signals a failure in resourcing or planning, not an inherent conflict between the laws themselves. The concept of “undue hardship,” often cited in accommodation discussions, applies specifically to the lengths an employer must go to provide support and modifications. It does not, however, create an exception to OHS duties or provide a defense for failing to protect workers from workplace violence. An employer cannot justify an unsafe work environment by pointing to its human rights obligations. Instead, the challenge lies in developing sophisticated, well-resourced systems that allow both sets of rights to be honored concurrently, ensuring every child’s right to education is protected while every employee’s right to safety is guaranteed.
2. The Critical Role of the Hierarchy of Controls
At the core of effective OHS management is a foundational principle known as the hierarchy of controls, a framework that requires employers to address workplace hazards in a specific, descending order of effectiveness. This systematic approach is not limited to physical dangers like machinery or chemical exposure; it is equally applicable and essential for managing psychosocial hazards, including the risk of workplace violence. The hierarchy mandates that organizations first implement the most effective and reliable solutions, starting with eliminating the hazard altogether if possible. When elimination is not feasible, the focus shifts to substitution, followed by engineering controls (isolating people from the hazard), administrative controls (changing the way people work), and finally, personal protective equipment. Because workplace violence can cause both physical and psychological harm, the controls implemented must be robust enough to address both outcomes. This structured methodology forces organizations to look beyond superficial fixes and tackle the root causes of risk, moving from high-level, systemic interventions to individual-level measures. It represents a shift from a reactive to a proactive safety culture, where the primary responsibility for safety lies with the employer and the systems it designs, not with the individual employee’s ability to react in a crisis.
A frequent and critical misstep in addressing workplace violence is the tendency for employers to default to training as their primary, and sometimes only, response. This approach effectively inverts the hierarchy of controls, placing the burden of safety squarely on the shoulders of individual workers rather than on the organization and its leadership. While training is a necessary component of a comprehensive safety plan, it is an administrative control at the worker level and one of the least effective measures when used in isolation. Training cannot compensate for fundamental systemic failures such as inadequate staffing levels, poor environmental design that lacks de-escalation spaces, or the absence of clear and supportive administrative protocols. When workers are left to manage violent or aggressive incidents without adequate systemic support, the psychological toll is immense and compounds with each exposure, regardless of how well-trained they may be. This over-reliance on training not only fails to mitigate the hazard effectively but also creates a false sense of security, masking deeper organizational vulnerabilities and ultimately failing to fulfill the employer’s primary duty of care. True safety is achieved when robust, high-level controls create an environment where individual responses are a final layer of defense, not the first and only one.
3. A Comprehensive Framework for Crisis Readiness
Building a truly crisis-ready environment begins with implementing controls at the highest levels of the hierarchy, focusing on systemic and environmental factors that can prevent incidents before they occur. A cornerstone of this approach is establishing appropriate and realistic staffing levels. Viewing staffing purely as a budget line item to be minimized is a critical error; inadequate staffing is frequently a primary causal factor in workplace violence incidents, not merely a constraint to be managed. Proper ratios of teachers and educational assistants to students with exceptional needs increase the opportunity for positive, safe learning experiences for everyone. Beyond staffing, environmental design plays a crucial role. This includes ensuring classrooms and other spaces have clear and unobstructed egress routes, designated de-escalation spaces for when individuals feel overwhelmed, and an environment where potential projectiles and sensory triggers are minimized. Complementing these physical controls are robust administrative measures, such as a structured case management system that includes regular reviews of student progress and risk assessments. This oversight must be linked to ensuring students have access to appropriate support systems outside of the school, addressing their developmental needs holistically and reducing the likelihood that challenges will escalate into crises within the school environment.
Once foundational systemic and environmental controls are in place, the focus can shift to administrative controls tailored to the individual and the worker. A key element is the development of individualized safety plans for students with known behavioral challenges. These plans are not punitive but supportive, providing assigned staff with essential information about the student’s behavioral history, known triggers, effective calming strategies, and existing support systems. To be effective, these plans must be stored in a confidential but easily accessible location for all appropriate staff members and updated regularly to reflect the student’s evolving needs and progress. This ensures that interventions are current, helpful, and aligned with both student success and worker safety. Alongside these individualized plans, targeted training and skill development serve as a critical administrative control. This should include education on neurodiversity, such as understanding Autism and ADHD, as well as trauma-informed care principles. Specialized crisis intervention skills are also vital, equipping staff to manage escalating behaviors constructively. This comprehensive training should extend to leadership, preparing them to support employees effectively, and should be reinforced with ongoing coaching, mentoring, and professional development to ensure skills remain sharp and relevant.
4. Bridging the Gap Between Policy and Practice
The final layer of a comprehensive crisis readiness strategy involved detailed planning for both immediate response and long-term support. It was essential to create clear, actionable protocols that guided staff on how to handle a student crisis as it escalated, with the primary goal of protecting all parties from physical and psychological harm. These immediate response plans needed to be drilled and understood, so they could be executed calmly and effectively under pressure. However, the organization’s responsibility did not end once a crisis de-escalated. A critical, yet often overlooked, component of readiness was the provision of accessible and timely mental health support for both staff and students in the aftermath of an incident. Exposure to violence and aggression, even when no physical injury occurs, can have a significant psychological impact. Offering resources for support acknowledged this reality and helped foster a culture of care and resilience, demonstrating that the well-being of every individual was a priority. This post-incident support was not an optional add-on but an integral part of fulfilling the employer’s duty of care.
Ultimately, the successful management of challenging behavior demanded that employers meet their legal obligations to accommodate students with disabilities and to protect workers from foreseeable harm as concurrent, not conflicting, duties. The investigation into these workplace challenges revealed that instances where these obligations appeared to clash were almost always indicators of inadequate resourcing, poor systemic planning, or a failure to implement a multi-layered control strategy. It became clear that relying solely on worker training as a solution was insufficient to discharge an employer’s OHS duties. The hierarchy of controls required that hazards be addressed through higher-level interventions first. Organizations that failed to invest in proper funding, adequate staffing levels, and sound environmental and administrative systems remained liable for the foreseeable physical and psychological harms that resulted. The path forward was one of integrated planning, where the principles of human rights and workplace safety were woven together to create environments that were fundamentally both inclusive and safe for everyone.
