Psychological Health and Safety: Employer and Supervisor Edition
Once you have registered and enrolled, scroll to the Course Content section at the end of this page to begin your lessons.
Our online psychological health and safety training for employers, managers and supervisors shows how to manage psychosocial hazards like any other workplace hazard. In eight narrated video lessons, you’ll learn the business and legal case, your duties across Canada, how to identify and assess psychosocial hazards with workers, how to apply the hierarchy of controls, how to build a harassment and violence prevention program, how to support workers, and how to monitor and improve.
Training a team? For online group training, buy your enrolments here, then complete our Group Training Student Information form so we can set up each learner’s account.
Learn more about how our online safety training works.
Psychosocial hazards affect people, production, claims and audits. Excessive workload, poor role clarity, harassment, violence and fatigue lead to absence, turnover, errors, incidents and complaints. Managing them through your OHS management system, with leadership commitment and worker participation, protects people and the operation.
This course is awareness-level training. It isn’t a certification, it isn’t medical, psychological or legal advice, and it doesn’t replace your employer’s policies or the law that applies to your work. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 9-1-1. For crisis support, call or text 9-8-8.
Employer and Supervisor Edition at a Glance
Price: $34.99 CAD plus GST per learner
Delivery: 100% online and self-paced
Course format: 8 narrated video lessons in four modules, with Canadian workplace examples and a knowledge check after every lesson
Course length (estimated): About 2 hours, including about 1 hour 36 minutes of lesson video plus the knowledge checks and final quiz
Assessment: A three-question knowledge check after every lesson (100% to continue) and a six-question final quiz (80% to pass), with unlimited retries
Includes: A downloadable 61-page Student Reference Guide with a card for every teaching slide, lesson summaries, a law-by-jurisdiction reference table, official sources and 4 tools
Certificate: Certificate of Completion
Covers: All Canadian provinces and territories, and federally regulated work
Developed by: Calgary Safety Consultants, led by John Duplessis, a Canadian Registered Safety Professional (CRSP)
What Does This Psychological Health and Safety Training Cover?
This psychological health and safety training treats psychological health like any other part of workplace safety: hazards are identified, reported and controlled, and people get support when they need it.
You’ll learn how to:
- Place psychosocial hazards in your OHS management system and make the business case.
- Determine which jurisdiction’s law applies and what every jurisdiction requires.
- Use CSA Z1003 and ISO 45003 as checklists, and find psychosocial hazards in your own data while protecting privacy.
- Plan and carry out a psychosocial risk assessment with workers, and report back.
- Apply the hierarchy of controls to workload, scheduling, role clarity, change, violence and working alone.
- Build a harassment and violence prevention policy or plan with fair, timely and confidential investigations.
- Hold supportive conversations, respond after critical incidents and plan accommodation and return to work.
- Track leading and lagging indicators, verify implementation and run management review.
What Are Psychosocial Hazards?
Psychosocial hazards are the parts of work, and the way work is organized and managed, that can harm a person’s psychological health. Common examples include excessive or unclear workload, tight deadlines with little control over the work, poor role clarity, lack of support from supervisors or coworkers, poorly managed change, conflict, harassment and bullying, workplace violence, working alone or in isolation, shift work and fatigue, and exposure to traumatic events.
They affect physical safety too. A worker who is exhausted, stressed or distracted is more likely to make an error, miss a hazard or skip a step. At Calgary Safety Consultants, psychosocial hazards sit within the Psychosocial energy source, one of the 12 CSC Energy Sources, so they’re identified, assessed and controlled with the same approach used for Gravity, Motion or Electrical hazards.
This course shows how to find these hazards with your workers, rate the risk and put controls in place that change the work, not just the worker. Training, policies and employee and family assistance programs still matter, but they add to work design controls rather than replace them.
Psychological Health and Safety Law in Canada
Every province and territory, and the federal government, requires employers to address workplace harassment and violence. Most workers are covered by the law of the province or territory where the work is done. Federally regulated work, such as banks, interprovincial trucking, airlines and telecommunications, falls under Part II of the Canada Labour Code and the Work Place Harassment and Violence Prevention Regulations.
Across Canada, the laws share common elements: definitions of harassment and violence, a written policy, plan or code of practice, violence risk assessment and controls, reporting and investigation with confidentiality, training, and review. Reasonable management action isn’t harassment. Quebec’s laws address psychological harassment and require psychosocial risks to be identified and controlled, and the federal regulations set out a detailed resolution process.
The Student Reference Guide lists the main laws in each jurisdiction, with official sources, checked on November 6, 2026. Laws change, so read the current official text before you rely on a requirement.
Who Should Take This Course?
It’s suitable for:
- Owners, employers and senior managers
- Supervisors, forepersons and lead hands
- Safety coordinators and HR professionals
- Health and safety committee members and representatives
- Organizations preparing for COR, SECOR or client prequalification audits
Workers can take our Psychological Health and Safety: Worker Edition.
Course Features
- 100% online and self-paced
- 8 narrated video lessons in four modules
- Psychosocial hazards managed through the CSC Psychosocial energy source, one of 12 CSC Energy Sources
- Canadian workplace examples, Apply it activities and decision points
- A three-question knowledge check after each lesson, with feedback after each answer
- A six-question final quiz
- A downloadable Student Reference Guide with a law-by-jurisdiction reference table
- A Certificate of Completion
The Student Reference Guide includes 4 tools you can fill in and use at work:
- Policy and Program Elements Checklist: Check your harassment and violence prevention policy or plan against these common elements, then against your own jurisdiction’s required content list.
- Psychosocial Hazard Assessment Worksheet: Record what you find for one area, role or task. Use a recognized framework as a checklist so nothing is missed.
- Control Plan and Verification: List each control, where it sits on the hierarchy, and how you’ll check that it’s in place and working.
- Return-to-Work Planning Checklist: Plan accommodation and return to work with the worker, based on functional abilities. Keep medical information confidential.
Course Modules
Module One: The Business and Legal Case
Module One makes the business and legal case: psychosocial hazards in the safety system, and legal duties across Canada.
Lesson One: Psychological Health and Safety as a Workplace Hazard. Psychosocial hazards are workplace hazards, and they belong in the same management system as every other hazard. This lesson defines psychosocial hazards, psychosocial risk and psychological safety, and shows where they fit in your OHS management system and in ISO 45001 and ISO 45003.
Part 2 makes the business case: how psychological harm affects production, safety, claims, legal exposure and audits. Part 3 covers the leadership actions that make it work: visible commitment, consultation with workers, and supervisors who act as the front line.
Lesson Two: Legal Duties Across Canada. Workplace safety law in Canada is set by fourteen jurisdictions, and the one that governs your work decides what you must do. This lesson starts with how to confirm whether provincial, territorial or federal law applies, and which other laws, like human rights and employment standards, also apply.
Part 2 summarizes what every jurisdiction requires, from definitions and written policies to violence assessment, investigation, training and records. Part 3 covers where jurisdictions differ, including the federal process, Quebec’s explicit psychosocial risk rules, review cycles, thresholds and recent changes.
Module Two: Identifying and Assessing Psychosocial Hazards
Module Two covers identifying and assessing psychosocial hazards: recognized frameworks, hazards by type of work, data sources and assessing risk with workers.
Lesson Three: Psychosocial Hazards and Risk Factors. You can’t control what you haven’t identified. This lesson uses two recognized frameworks, CSA Z1003 and ISO 45003, as checklists to make sure no psychosocial hazard is missed, and shows how to map them to one department.
Part 2 looks at hazards common to different types of work, including public-facing work, health care, camps, remote work, traumatic exposure and shift work. Part 3 covers where to find the information in your safety records, HR data and aggregate support data, and how to protect worker privacy while you use it.
Lesson Four: Assessing Psychosocial Risk with Workers. A psychosocial risk assessment works best when it’s planned with workers, not for them. This lesson covers how to set the scope, choose participants, build trust through confidentiality, and pick methods that fit the size of your workplace.
Part 2 explains the methods: surveys, small-group discussions, interviews, task walk-throughs and your existing hazard assessment tools, plus how to rate psychosocial risk. Part 3 covers what to record, how to set priorities and timelines, and why reporting back to workers keeps them taking part.
Module Three: Controlling Psychosocial Risk
Module Three covers controlling psychosocial risk: the hierarchy of controls, work design, and harassment and violence prevention programs.
Lesson Five: Applying the Hierarchy of Controls to Psychosocial Hazards. The hierarchy of controls works for psychosocial hazards too. This lesson explains why organizational controls come first, and how elimination, substitution, engineering and administrative controls apply to strain at work.
Part 2 covers work design controls for workload and staffing, scheduling and fatigue, role clarity, change, violence prevention and working alone. Part 3 explains where individual supports fit as a supplement, how to respond to critical incidents, and how to verify that your controls are in place and working.
Lesson Six: Harassment and Violence Prevention Programs. A harassment and violence prevention program needs more than a policy on the wall. This lesson covers the content your policy or plan needs: commitment, definitions, scope, roles and prevention measures matched to your jurisdiction’s list.
Part 2 explains how to set up reporting routes and run fair, timely and confidential investigations, including choosing an investigator, protecting against reprisal and following through on corrective action. Part 3 covers training, emergency procedures for violence, records and retention, and when to review the program.
Module Four: Responding, Supporting and Improving
Module Four covers the supervisor’s role in conversations, critical incidents and return to work, and monitoring, evaluating and improving the program.
Lesson Seven: The Supervisor’s Role: Conversations, Support and Return to Work. Supervisors often see changes in a worker first, and what they say in that first conversation matters. You don’t need to be a counsellor, but you do need to notice, ask, listen and refer, while respecting boundaries and confidentiality.
Part 2 covers how to support workers after a critical incident, from immediate safety and practical needs to psychological first aid principles and follow-up. Part 3 explains the duty to accommodate, how to plan a gradual return to work based on functional abilities, and how to protect medical information.
Lesson Eight: Monitoring, Evaluating and Improving. A program only works if you know whether it’s working. This lesson covers how to choose leading indicators that show the work is being done, lagging indicators that show harm, and why trends matter more than single numbers.
Part 2 explains how to verify implementation through documents and records, interviews and observations, and how this aligns with audits. Part 3 covers management review, the triggers that call for revising the program, and how to communicate changes so the program keeps improving.
Group and Live Training
Many employers use this psychological health and safety training for their supervisors, managers, HR staff and committee members, and enrol every worker in the Worker Edition, so leaders and crews share the same language and expectations. To enrol a group, buy the number of seats you need on this page, then send us each learner’s details with the Group Training Student Information form.
Training a whole team? Our workplace mental health and psychological safety training page compares both editions and explains our live virtual and onsite group training for employers in Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan.
How to Complete the Course
Enrol on this page, then work through the lessons in order. After each video, complete the lesson’s three-question knowledge check. You need all three answers correct (100%) to move on, with feedback after each answer and unlimited retries.
After Lesson Eight, complete the six-question final quiz. You need 80% to pass, and you can retake it as often as you need. Once you’ve completed every lesson, knowledge check and the final quiz, you can download your Certificate of Completion.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is this course for?
It’s for employers, managers, supervisors, safety coordinators, HR professionals and committee members in any Canadian province or territory.
Does this course make my workplace compliant?
No course can do that on its own. This awareness-level training explains the requirements and practical methods. Compliance depends on what you put in place, with your workers, and on the current law in your jurisdiction.
Does it cover CSA Z1003 and ISO 45003?
Yes. The course uses CSA Z1003 and ISO 45003 as frameworks to identify psychosocial hazards, and explains that both are voluntary unless a contract or client requires them.
How long does the course take?
We estimate about 2 hours, including the lesson videos, knowledge checks and final quiz. You can stop and return at any time.
Do I receive a certificate?
Yes. You receive a Certificate of Completion after you complete all eight lessons, their knowledge checks and the final quiz (80% to pass, with unlimited retakes).
Can we purchase training for a group of supervisors?
Yes. Employers can buy online training for two or more learners on this page. After placing your order, complete our Group Training Student Information form with your order number and each learner’s details so we can set up their accounts.
Can Calgary Safety Consultants help us build our program?
Yes. We help employers assess psychosocial hazards, write harassment and violence prevention policies and plans, and prepare for audits. Contact us to talk about your workplace.
Additional Resources
Read the current law for your jurisdiction on the official government sites listed in the Student Reference Guide. Federal law is at laws-lois.justice.gc.ca.
Need support now? Call or text 9-8-8 for the Suicide Crisis Helpline, call 2-1-1 for community services in most of Canada, or call 9-1-1 in an emergency.
Related courses: Hazard Assessment and Control for Canadian Workplaces and Understanding Canadian OH&S Legislation.
