The legal duties and responsibilities of employers, supervisors and workers overlap and complement each other. Together, they create what’s known as the internal responsibility system or IRS. Learn more by visiting the MOL’s website about IRS.
Simply put, the IRS means everyone in the workplace has a role to play and a duty to actively ensure workers are safe. Every worker who sees a health and safety problem such as a hazard in the workplace has a duty to report the situation to management. Once a hazard has been identified, the employer and supervisor have a duty to look at the problem and eliminate any hazard that could injure workers.