A customer sends over a vendor questionnaire before renewing the contract. Somewhere on page three: "Provide evidence that all personnel have completed required health and safety and accessibility training." You know your team did the training. Producing the evidence by Friday is a different problem.
Why you are being asked at all
This is rarely about doubting you. Your client is managing their own exposure. Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, an organization that engages a contractor takes on duties in respect of that work, so their procurement team is documenting the diligence they performed on you. The same instinct shows up in prequalification programs that many Ontario buyers rely on, and in accessibility commitments carried down the supply chain.
The practical consequence: your answer becomes part of their file. Vague answers create follow-up questions; documented answers end the thread.
What these questionnaires typically want
- A named policy — usually health and safety, and workplace violence and harassment — with a review date showing it is current.
- Completion evidence, not enrolment. "Everyone is assigned the training" is not the same claim as "everyone finished it," and procurement teams have learned to tell the difference.
- Coverage of the people actually on their work, including anyone who joined since the contract started.
- A date. An undated attestation is worth very little; a per-person completion date is worth a lot.
- Sometimes accessibility — AODA training under O. Reg. 191/11, s. 7, particularly where your people interact with the public on the client's behalf.
How to answer well
- Answer the mandate, not the vibe. Name the legal duty you are meeting and cite it — "basic occupational health and safety awareness training under O. Reg. 297/13" reads far better than "annual safety training."
- Attach a completion export. A dated list of people and completions, exported from a system rather than typed into a form, is the single strongest thing you can send.
- State your interval honestly. If a mandate is one-time, say it is one-time. Claiming an annual refresher that does not exist creates a commitment you will be audited against next year.
- Say how new hires are covered. Buyers are specifically worried about the person who started last month. "New employees are assigned automatically on their start date" is the answer they want.
- Keep the response. The same questionnaire, or one very like it, will arrive from the next client.
A caution on over-claiming
It is tempting to tick every box. Do not attest to training you cannot evidence, or to certifications you do not hold — some sector-specific programs, such as working at heights training for construction projects under O. Reg. 213/91, must come from an approved provider, and a general awareness course is not a substitute. An honest "not applicable to our scope of work, here is what does apply" is a better answer than an unsupportable yes.
Turning a scramble into an export
Almost every item above is answered by a record rather than by more training. Ethica is built for that: Ontario's mandatory courses and policy acknowledgments ready to assign, delivered by email link with no employee accounts, completions recorded per person with dates and policy versions, new hires picked up automatically, and a CSV or per-employee certificate you can attach to the questionnaire the same day it arrives.
See what Ontario requires and the proof each mandate demands, or check which duties apply to your business.