The Wright Stuff?

If you believe in the sincerity of Glen Wright, you might describe him as a visionary. If you are more cynical -- as many injured workers and employers in Ontario are - you might withhold judgment, deciding instead that the proof is in the proverbial pudding.

Glen Wright is the newly appointed chair of the Workers’ Compensation Board of Ontario. He has agreed to take on the leadership of a vastly despised, ill-reputed organization. At the same time, he has vowed to turn this giant ship around and set it properly on the course it was originally designed to follow.

Is Glen Wright the right person to do the job? His background in the health and disability insurance industry is impressive, his accomplishments spanning decades. He has also been actively involved with the Canadian Institute of Technology for the Environment, the Grand River Conservation Authority, and the Waterloo Chamber of Commerce. He has served on numerous Boards and community councils.

And now Glen Wright, through a massive restructuring, is steering one of Ontario’s largest bureaucracies into a new future. A future which, he claims, will offer higher quality service to injured workers; easier accessibility for employers; more efficiency in its operations; and a higher level of safety and prevention practices in the workplace.

You might be skeptical; you might prefer to wait to see what really happens at the Workers’ Compensation Board of Ontario. But if you are able to accept the commitments he makes during the interview you are about to read -- you might just think that Glen Wright is one of the best things that could ever have happened to an organization fraught with systemic problems, and well overdue for an overhaul.

Q: Had you had any warning, when you came into this organization, about the extent to which it was detested, despised and despaired of in the community that it is designed to serve?

A: It would be hard to participate in the business community in this province without realizing it was contentious. But I don’t think I understood the depth and the intensity. I didn’t have a lot of exposure to how the injured workers felt about it. I thought that we spent a lot of time taking care of injured workers, whereas now I think our system spends too much time paying bills, and is not focused on successfully helping people re-build their lives and get back to work.

The system was set up very much focused on the injured worker. But after several months here, I’m not sure we produce the kind of results for injured workers that were perceived as the concept when it was started. I think we can get better at it.

Q: I was struck in reading about the importance you put on changing the culture to a customer-service focus. It’s an odd thing to say. One assumes that is the purpose of the institution. If it has to be changed to a "customer service" focus, what was it before?

A: I think we have been very much focused on ourselves, internally. If there’s something to do, we say, "How do WE do it?" and then we make everybody else fit us. If somebody makes a rule, the rule is paramount. The process is more important than the outcomes. It doesn’t mean that the people who work here don’t care; they do care, they care a lot. But they care after they’ve cared about meeting the process.

The Workers’ Compensation Board has an obligation to take care of the injured workers, and it doesn’t just mean paying their bills -- in some cases, we could be paying for treatments that are not helpful. We should be the injured worker’s advocate for good medical care, proper treatment in the workplace, return-to-work programs and rehabilitation. We should be less the accountants, and take more responsibility for the outcomes of our treatments.

With the employers, who are also our customers, we have an obligation to make our communications readable and our rules effective, but simple enough that the average employer in the province can deal with this without hiring a lawyer, or an accountant, or a consultant. There’s a whole consulting community in the province for both injured workers and employers that essentially takes our rules and interprets them, much like an accountant does for Revenue Canada. We have an industry that is built around our complexity!

Q: Let me read a quote from the "Hamilton and District of Injured Workers News" that reveals the depth of distrust there is out there. I’d like to hear you tell me what steps you’re trying to put in place to deal with the distrust, even though that’s just one part of the problem.

Rules of Engagement, "Hamilton and District Injured Workers News": "Don’t meet with any Workers’ Compensation Board member without a witness or a tape recorder. Don’t sign anything with any WCB member that your legal representative hasn’t approved. Don’t talk on the telephone with a WCB member without tape recording. Get copies of everything that deals with you: doctors’ reports, doctors’ letters, X-rays, prescriptions, etc."

You see where that’s going, and the attitudes it reflects. That’s not going to come as a surprise to you, but it sure did to me. How are you going to address that in practical terms? What are the steps?

A: The first impression created by that is that there’s a group of people here who are purposefully trying to subvert the rights of injured workers. I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s not true. There may be a few individuals like that within a large organization, but the problem is really systemic.

One of our problems is that we have close to 800 separate job descriptions in a 4,000-person company. The jobs are sliced up into compartments. We’ve tended to put our most junior people at the front end of the claims process, where you come in if you’re an injured worker. Conventional wisdom now says that you should have your best, most knowledgeable people at the front end, to help the person early on.

We also change adjudicators with some regularity. An intake person moves to a more senior adjudicator position, the injured worker is handed off to different a person. I think that’s very damaging to the relationship. The person whom you dealt with for the first three weeks of your claim may have really wanted to do whatever you discussed on the phone. But the next adjudicator could have a different attitude or a heavier caseload.

The other thing is that an adjudicator who’s dealing with a steel worker one day may be dealing with an auto worker or a health care worker the next day. In our new model, we’re focusing on industries and getting our people delivering services into particular industry cases. For example, if a division of our organization deals with the mining industry, then all the adjudicators and nurses in that system will focus on, and process, mining claims. They’ll go out and visit mining sites, go down the mine and understand what it’s like to work in a mine.

I think our staff should understand how the business of our injured workers and employees and employers operates. What do the tools look like? You can’t talk about partial disabilities and functional abilities of a worker without understanding what their jobs are. What does it really mean in that job environment?

We also believe you should see being an adjudicator as being in a career. There are career adjudicators with us and it is an appropriate, meaningful career. People do take pregnancy leaves or get promotions and change jobs, but as a general rule of thumb, if you have a permanent disability and you’re going to be in the sphere of the WCB as an injured worker for 15 years, I believe it is theoretically possible that you can have the same adjudicator from the first day of your claim until you retire.

Q: Looking at this in a hard-nosed way, are you concerned that there may be a risk of an alliance developing between those two people that, in fact, works against the system? That the personal relationship becomes so strong that the interests of the institution, of the province, of the business community, are somewhat contaminated, because these people become too friendly?

A: That criticism could be levelled at us even today. Some people in the business community would see us as being totally biased in that direction. It’s not because of the length of the relationship. No, I think this organization can train, develop and hold our people accountable to be professional at what we do.

Historically, we have not had a lot of consistency inside the organization. If you have your claim processed by one adjudicator and an identical claim comes in to another adjudicator, there’s a serious chance that they will give you a different answer on the same facts. It would be a life’s work for somebody to be truly, fully functional in all of the policy and regulations and legislature.

In the new system, we’re going to try and have the right answer, so that it’s not all left to individual interpretations. We will have a quality assurance group that will help martial the interpretation of our policy and give consistency. These people will go out and randomly audit our performance against professional standards: Are we taking proper care of the injured worker?

We’re going to enter into this relationship another person. We’re seeking out and retaining nurses with some years of medical experience. Our hope is that while you will have an adjudicator to deal with the business side of your claim -- is it an appropriate claim, did it happen at work, is it covered under our legislation, those sorts of issues -- we’ll also have a nurse whose focus is on the medical issues and treatment. This individual will provide advice and coaching, in a non-adversarial relationship. We need to get better at making sure that people get good medical care, and that we understand their medical problem. And, at the same time, that we apply the rules in a fair and sensible manner.

Q: There’s another issue, though, connected with that part of your mandate, which is the early and safe return to work, as a function of the organization. If the injured worker has a permanent disability -- whether it’s large and visible like an amputation, or small and invisible like an emotional problem or a fatigue syndrome -- that person not only needs medical care and advice to get them back to the point where they are able and willing and ready to go back to work, but they also need an environment that welcomes them back. There is a task to be done, on the part of the community at large, in educating employers to understand that they have both an opportunity and an obligation in regard to that worker. Is that built into your optic about where you should be going?

A: Very much so. It will be one of the key and critical success factors. The re-integration of people back into the workplace is a win-win solution for everybody. It’s a win for quality of life of the injured worker. It’s an issue of productivity to the whole economy. And also, obviously, if the people are working and, once more, earning a living, it reduces the costs to our system.

Education and cooperation are important, and can go so far. But there is also new legislation that gives us a responsibility for promoting safety. Traditionally, that responsibility was with the Workplace Health and Safety Agency, another arm of government, and it’s now coming over to us. So, one of our shifts in mandates is to think about how to prevent injuries, not just assume that they’re inevitable. We’d like everybody to start thinking that all workplace accidents are preventable.

Q: Sounds a bit idealistic.

A: It is idealistic, but if you don’t set the bar very high, people don’t jump. I think we all have to reach higher on this.

Recently I looked at the statistics for safety in our province. In a number of workplaces, over 10 per cent of employees filed claims last year. Then you have organizations which had none. A big company in southwestern Ontario has 700 employees in a factory, and had zero claims last year. There are gains to be made in safety.

We come back around to your question about the willingness of the employer. Education and encouragement alone have not improved safety sufficiently.

But business responds to other things. It will respond to a combination of good citizenship and financial stewardship. In our new system, I believe you will see the Workers’ Compensation costs get stacked up higher on employers with bad safety records, and will be lower on employers who have good safety records. If you do have workers with injuries, how effective and cooperative were you in getting them back to work? The fact is that it’s far less expensive in the long haul for the employer to accommodate a worker back in the workplace than to pay our surcharges -- especially if they start to be increasingly punitive for bad safety and prevention measures.

Q: That’s going to make you popular in the business community!

A: Well, good employers are tired of paying for bad employers. Good employers still have to send us money if they have no claims. They are tired of subsidizing their competitors who have claims. Safety should become a competitive advantage.

Q: Glen, one of the obstacles you’re facing right now is that the labour community views this Harris government as the enemy, and inevitably views the WCB as an instrument of the enemy, and therefore is not going to be very trustful of any initiatives that you take. How do you tackle that?

A: I understand the cynicism. Between government and the way we’ve operated over the years at the senior levels of this organization, how could one not be cynical?

Most of the people in the province will say that to be chair of the WCB you have to be friends with the Premier. Well, it happens to be true that Glen Wright is friends with the Premier. But what also happens to be true is that I have knowledge and skills in this industry. And if I hadn’t been friends with the Premier, I’m not sure I would have accepted the job.

If I had a wish for the place, it would be to see it cease to be an instrument for anybody. I believe this place can operate without being an instrument of labour, management, or any particular government. There is a professional, very necessary job to be done here. Taking care of injured workers, collecting premiums and managing the financial resources of this place should not be a political issue.

Of the Board of Directors that we’ve organized to sit with me, I’m the only person who has any obvious political history. And I make no apologies for who I am -- I’ve enjoyed my political activities a lot. But the principle of appointment to the board for the past year has been skills.

Q: How did you achieve that? I couldn’t achieve that with the CBC board!

A: I didn’t achieve. It was the Premier who said in the election campaign that the policy is to fix the place, and appoint people who understand the industry.

Our most recent member, John Gardner, was president of Sun Life for 14 years. Eileen Mercier, one of the brightest financial people in the city, was senior vice-president and CFO for Abitibi Price. Jim Stewart is one of the most knowledgeable, thoughtful guys on safety and prevention around -- formerly of Dupont, which has almost no accidents. Pat Dillon, president of Provincial Building Trades, is a very competent and committed board member, and understands a part of our constituency which some of the rest of us haven’t had a lot of exposure to. Michael O’Keefe, the president now, is a professional manager who has come out of the health care industry.

What we have to do is get our credibility back, one day at a time, with actions. I personally believe we will be able to do this. It’s going to take us a while.

Q: You have a lot of recipients out there who have been receiving poor service. In terms of bridging the gap, fixing the credibility issue, is there any mechanism of consumer input being considered or in place, where recipients of the services have some sort of communication route?

A: I don’t think you solve your relationship problems by confusing governance with customer service. The Board of Directors should govern. Governing this place has to do with managing an eight-billion-dollar fund and 4,500 employees.

We should be communicating with the employers and the injured workers, to understand how we meet their needs. But if you were to put six labour people, six injured workers and six employers around the boardroom table, what you get is an interesting debate, but no decisions.

I think we’ve got some really interesting opportunities here. First of all, we have to have some broad-based communications. There has never been effective, readable, interesting communication with workers. There are a lot of them who have been hard to reach. We have not had an ability to reach injured workers directly, especially in the ethnic communities.

I talked to you earlier about organizing by industry. Labour people and people in the injured workers’ movement say they sometimes have trouble getting consensus with people from different sectors, because they have different kinds of problems. They live in different milieus and different environments.

We’re saying there should be a formal, participative advisory council, organized by industry. So, the general manager of the mining division is going to judge performance on how successfully we meet the needs of our clients in the mining industry. We will talk to injured workers, unions and labour organizers who spend their time in the mining industry. We must get down to where there’s a manageable group around a table, with a manageable agenda.

We need to look at safety at that level, too. Safety in an underground mine is a different discussion than safety in a place where you’re operating computers and having repetitive strain injuries. We plan on having some really meaningful discussions on issues that are core to the life and times of the people in that specific industry.

It’s also geographic. For example, mining is typically northern Ontario, so we should locate our offices based on where our clients are.

Q: You’ve talked about the problems you have communicating with the customer group. What about dealing with your own staff? What kind of reaction are you getting from the changes that are proposed?

A: The first word that comes to mind is anxiety. I think this is typical of organizations undergoing change. There is a popular belief among some of our employees that we’re going to cut 20 per cent of our employees. That plan doesn’t exist. We’re saying the solutions to our problems are doing our jobs better, not necessarily changing the size of the organization.

I’ll put that into context for you. We pay out $2.4 to $2.5-billion in benefits. Our administrative costs are about $320-million. If we were to take out one third of our administration costs, that would be a mammoth task and it would massively change this organization, but it would make almost no dent in our long-term financial position.

My view of the success of the organization will ultimately be based on how well we do our jobs. Now, we shouldn’t overstaff. We have flattened our organization, and we should run it correctly; but there is no targeted downsizing. Our focus is on reshaping the organization to better deliver services.

We’re talking about hiring quite a significant number of nurses. We’re also trying to create the new position of customer service representative, who will take a sense of responsibility for monitoring the delivery of our services in the workplace, for both injured workers and employers. We’re reallocating our current resources, where the focus is on enhancing service delivery.

My 30-second clip of our vision statement would be that a WCB employee would wear his or her WCB T-shirt to a neighbourhood barbecue. My hope is that we get to the point where we’re doing our jobs well enough that our staff are proud, and they don’t say, "I work for the government" or "I’m in the insurance business," but: "I work for the WCB, and last week I helped 10 people."

Q: Have you got a mechanism in the institution that is designed to meet the injured worker at the front line, and hear what he or she has to say about how the services are being delivered?

A: Nobody has yet established an effective communications vehicle. We have the Injured Workers Union, which represents some elements of the injured worker community. But it’s such a daunting task to look at the number of people with whom we need to communicate. I think we need to establish some better instruments for greater reach.

How do we get feedback? How do we know we’re achieving our results? We get some of it back through the workplace, and some of it back through organized representation, but I’d say it’s a huge, gaping hole in our structure. We can’t really say that we understand. We’re looking for advice on how we can communicate better with injured workers and employers.

Q: If I’m an injured worker and I have advice to bring you in response to that call, what do I do with it? Who do I talk to, write to, or phone? How do I get through to your huge staff? What assurance do I have that I’m not just bumping my gums and wasting my time?

A: First of all, if anybody writes to me personally, I can assure you that your correspondence will get attention. But systemically, we’ve got to do better on that. That’s why we’ve had the rise of representative groups and advocacy groups.

The Office of the Worker Advisor is there to assist you, as an injured worker, in dealing with us. I’d like to think also that we can be approached directly.

If people have suggestions or serious demonstrations of service deliveries, they could write to the Office of Service Delivery, 19th Floor, 200 University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3J1. If people have some concrete suggestions for me on how to do business, I’m really quite anxious to get that kind of information.

(The next issue of ABILITIES magazine will feature responses to this interview. If you would like to make your views known to ABILITIES, please write to us at 489 College St., Ste. 501, Toronto, Ontario, M6G 1A5, or fax: (416) 923-9829.)

RESTRUCTURING THE WORKERS’ COMPENSATION BOARD OF ONTARIO:

A SNAPSHOT VIEW

Following an internal review and a study of existing technology and disability management practices, the WCB approved a new organizational structure and service delivery model designed to meet a series of high policy objectives. These objectives include:

- the reduction of the frequency of workplace injury and disease through prevention;

- the improvement of efficiency, effectiveness and consistency of claims adjudication and handling;

- the improvement of service quality, satisfaction and relations with injured workers and employers; and

- the operation of a more effective and efficient organization.

A Summary of the Changes:

1. Centralize, standardize and automate all initial claims filing and processing, to the extent possible, building this capacity "off-line" from the current WCB operations.

2. Create a Claims Management Centre to sort, route and create processing rules on remaining claims, including expected recovery dates where appropriate. Use the most expert staff.

3. Establish an Adjudication Standards Group to set clear standards and be available to advise local adjudicators on decisions, gaining greater consistency thereby.

4. Create Vice Presidents for Prevention, Finance and Administration, and Operations, to develop programs, define performance targets and "drive" results.

5. Re-engineer local case handling processes, make adjudication positions much more comprehensive, fewer in number and more directly responsible for outcomes as part of a team.

6. Have longer-term cases managed locally by a team, with increased staffing resources, to reduce potential for caseload "overhand."

7. Create local case managers reporting to a regional head, who is responsible for all outcomes locally, so there is integration of purpose and delivery.

8. Have regional heads report to a vice president of operations, for consistency and central direction.

9. Re-assign freed-up local routine claims processing VR staff, to prevention, employer relations and case management, so is appropriate new staffing.

10. Appoint employer representatives, make them formal contact point with covered firms/institutions.

11. Assign claims, by industry and area, to specialist teams for adjudication and handoff to employers.

12. Expand compliance verification activities.

13. Let employer representatives, as industry/firm specialists, handle registration, classification, experience rating.

14. Establish central telephone call centre, for both enquiries and claimant contact.

Other Changes:

1. Establish performance standards and measures for all key functions (claims processing, prevention, etc.).

2. Initiate WCB-wide customer satisfaction training.

3. Examine outsourcing of initial claims processing, enquiry call centre, systems support, collections, and customer satisfaction polling and assessment.

4. Launch a plain English program to re-write all client communications.

(Excerpted from the report "Restructuring the Workers’ Compensation Board")