Accommodating employees with disabilities to the point of undue hardship under human rights legislation can be a complicated task. It’s important to make sure the accommodation process goes smoothly and the employee can focus on working as efficiently as possible, but employers may not be sure about what kinds of questions to ask disabled employees in order to meet their needs.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission recently posted a policy on its website concerning how it interprets and applies section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) when it receives an inquiry or complaint. The purpose of section 13 of the Act is to balance Canadians’ rights to equality and freedom of expression with respect to hate messages, as protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The parliamentary record indicates that section 13 was initially included in the legislation to address activities of individuals and groups who used the telephone system to disseminate hate messages. In December 2001, parliament amended the CHRA by adding section 13(2), which makes it clear that Internet hate messages come under the jurisdiction of the commission.

Read the whole article on Slaw.ca.

I’ve discussed workplace gossip here before, and what bosses can do to prevent it or at least reduce the potential harm, but there are a couple of hyper-modern developments that I didn’t get into: reality television and the Internet. These two things have created a culture of “sharing”, for lack of a better word, that encourages people at play or work to divulge the most mundane and private details of their lives to others—the kind of information that one previously might only have shared with family or best friends.