Quality assurance, training and performance management are all parts of our culture, but we need to do better at documentation and tracking.
WCB employees undergo training before they begin their jobs in claims management. The performance audit showed that some elements of their training had lapses in documentation. We recently added a new online Learning Management System which will greatly assist our ability to track actual hands-on training.
Our performance evaluation structure includes the expectation for two meetings – a mid-year check in and a formal annual evaluation. There is currently a requirement to formally file and document only the annual conversation, and the audit found this was occurring. There is not a formal requirement to document the mid-point conversation, but we will implement this improvement.
Quality assurance, similarly, will benefit from improved documentation. Our employees benefit every day from the oversight, management and guidance of our leadership team in their work. We handle thousands of claims, many of them very complex. Our employees work closely with their managers every day. Their managers provide experience, guidance, coaching and leadership on complex claim decisions. It happens daily – not just during formal file review.
Overall, we have a dedicated and experienced workforce, many of whom have spent their whole careers working in a specialized field. The nature of a workers’ compensation claim is changing, and it’s likely to be much more complex than it was even a few short years ago. We know the workforce of tomorrow needs to be different, and that’s why we have taken steps to evolve our workforce of the future, as part of our modernization project.