NQI Articles - How many full-time employees at WCB? We have almost 500 employees divided between Halifax and … Sydney …the majority are here in Halifax. So you’re responsible for the whole of Nova Scotia? Yes, we insure about 18,000 employers here in the province…[equating to] around 300,000 employees. That’s a lot of lives that you are responsible for. That’s right. And those are the employers who actually pay us a premium to have workplace insurance in place. But with our prevention mandate, we’re really responsible for all of Nova Scotia in terms of education awareness around working safely. The Canada Awards for Excellence and the Framework have various drivers. One of them is leadership which is obviously a key area. In your role as CEO of WCB, how important is it for you to be the evangelist to preaching the vision, mission and values of WCB? I think it’s absolutely fundamental. I’ve been in this role just a little over two years, and one of the first things I did with the Board of Directors is work [to define] a vision for this organization and [to] roll that through the organization; at the same time, re-branding this organization. So “this is where we’re going in terms of our long term vision… so if we’re in Halifax and our vision is Vancouver, who do we need to be as an organization to get there”. We started those conversations with all of our employees; I led those in small working groups with every employee to talk about “who do we need to be to be successful?” How many employees were involved in the process? All 500… I would have had working groups with every team, to talk about and center around our core [responsibilities] of prevention and return to work. And [to] set our core values, [which] we didn’t have in place ... We talked to our employees as to who we need to be and that then led to conversations…”Ok… if this is who we need to be as an organization, then what is it that we need to do to get to where we’re going?” That led to the development of a long-term business plan and …[a] very detailed strategic business plan every year. So our employees have been part of that process. I facilitated that with a partner in our communications team. How long did that take you? First of all, we did it in cross-functional work groups [in order] to have different teams in the room. One of the big opportunities here is to break down the silos of our business lines and integrate ourselves in a way that centers around the customer. We need to be customer centric. We’re not right now… what we’ve heard is that we have 3 distinct lines of business. There’s the claims side; the insurance side where an employer purchases insurance from us – so, that’s revenue per collection side; and then there’s the prevention side. As employers, they need service from all three business lines but they don’t know which door to knock on and they talk to different teams. So what came out loud and clear from our employees is the need to integrate to improve outcomes for our customers. That has led to the development of a new service delivery model centered around the customers who most need our help. [As a result]… we’re going to organize ourselves around the 18,000 customers who need our help the most, who drive 80% of the cost in our system. Number One: we can save lives and Number Two: we can improve outcomes for those injured and for the employers who employ them by insuring a more safe and timely return to work. Getting back to your question about the vision and the mission… that was a grass root… What is your vision? “Nova Scotia safe and secure for workplace injury” is our vision and we’re far from that. We have 34,000 injuries every year in this province and every two weeks someone dies on the job. So we are far and away from “Nova Scotia safe and secure for workplace injury”. Would you say that the 500 employees are clear on what the vision is? Yes… I do and we use every opportunity to remind them. Every six months, we go off-site with all of our employees for employee information sessions. “How are we doing on our performance, what are the key issues, what are the things we should celebrate and how are we doing on our goals, performance measures, balanced score card?” What is so amazing is that this has been an organic process and it’s driven by our employees. Our employees are the ones who are re-branding this organization as we go because we understand that everything we do around the customer needs to be aligned. People need to understand, when they come to work everyday, how it is what they do contributes to the overall success of the organization and the customers we serve. Who do you see as a customer… the 18,000 employers or the 300,000 employees? Do you distinguish between customers and clients? That’s a very interesting question that we’ve been debating for two years. We’ve used the word customer and client interchangeably and we’re now going to talk about those that we serve as our customer. The challenge in a monopolistic organization like ours … [is that] people don’t have a choice [but] to deal with us. But I’d like to think about [it as] customer service and we as a team would like to think about [it as] customer service. For example, when someone goes into Canadian Tire or Sears, everything that organization does is designed to have a highly engaged, satisfied customer who wants to come back. A loyal customer and a satisfied customer. What we want to create [that] here for those who have to deal with us, either because they paid the premium (the employer) or unfortunately, they are injured on the job and we’re here to help them. If we became competitive in a competitive environment, they would choose to come back to deal with us because of the service they’ve received, the outcomes that we’ve jointly achieved and the value that we bring. You mentioned the vision… was there a mission that came out of that? The mission is still in development right now and it’s to deliver the vision. Our Board of Directors immediately went to five goals and then some specific measures under each of those goals. I said, “We need to launch a mission… we need to set core values in this organization” so now we have key value statements that were just approved in June at our Board. We used the exact same process to roll out the vision that we [used to] roll out the values. That came together with [participation from] every team … we had a group of employees initially come up with the value statements and then we rolled those out to every team. It was remarkably consistent. We only have 3 values… and they’re around a caring and compassionate organization, an organization that’s a safety champion and an organization with a can-do attitude. Those values are now becoming the basis for a new rewards and recognition process that our employees are developing. We have a lot of involvement. As the CEO, you’re facilitating this thing but everybody is getting involved in the whole process and not being mandated from the top. Do you think that’s the role that a CEO needs to be out there reminding everybody why they come to work everyday? Yes. I’m a champion and workers compensation is a challenging business. It’s difficult work that our teams do everyday. They have to deal with tragedies day in and day out and it’s really important to keep people focused on the end state. Why are we here? We survey our employees and our customers and have done so for many years. We use an independent corporate research associate. We do our injured workers monthly, our employers quarterly and our employees annually. We take a look at our performance on a monthly basis at the executive level and roll that out to the organization in terms of where we are with our targets for the year. Our employees have said that they work here because it’s a really great place to work and they can make a difference in peoples’ lives. The people, who choose to live here and work here do so because they believe in customer service and they can make an impact. We never hear it’s about the salaries… it’s to make a difference. It’s wonderful to be able to lead an organization of like-minded people who feel that way. You rise above the individual tragedy that you’re dealing with and you know that you can help that person and you do, but to be in the business of saving lives is a marvellous thing. Do you see yourself as being in a business of saving lives? Yes; and helping those who are injured, despite everybody’s intent to try to prevent that from happening, to get back to work as soon as it’s safe to do so. In terms of corporate governance, you mentioned the Board of Directors, how often do they meet? They meet monthly except for the two summer months, July and August. There are 3 working committees of the Board who meet also in addition to regular monthly Board meetings. It’s made up of stakeholders… 4 employer representatives, 4 employee representatives, a Chair and Deputy Chair; and the business of the organization drives their agenda. I’m a member of the Board as well and [an] executive corporate secretary. There has been a lot of work done on governance with our Board in the past two years. A brand new governance model and the actual make up of our Board has changed in the last year. Last September, … 6 out of 8 of our members were brand new… we are part of a larger system, called “The Workplace Safety and Insurance System” and WCB is one of 4 partner agencies [within the System] working together in Nova Scotia. There’s [also] [Occupational Health & Safety] OHS down at the Department of Environment and Labour, the enforcement side of safety, there’s an appeals tribunal and there’s a workers’ advisor program assisting injured workers with their appeals. We now have in place a Workplace Safety and Insurance System strategic plan for the entire system - not just for WCB - and we’ve just had approved systems performance measures for the System that each agenc[y] is intended to support. The other agencies don’t have their own Boards but there’s a committee called, “Systems Goals Advisory Committee” made up of stakeholder representatives, [including] two [Workers’ Compensation] Board members …they set the strategic priorities for the System. So our Board of Directors really is responsible for the governance of this organization and influences the broader system as well. It’s very complex. So there’s WCB, the appeals … Yes… appeals tribunal (we call WCAT), the WAP (the workers advisor program) and as well OHS down at [the] Department of Environment and Labour, and soon to be in place a stakeholder councillor program to assist employers [and] workers navigate the system. So there are quite a few levels and the business plan is congruent... so people are running in the same direction. Exactly. Are those organizations accountable to WCB or are they independent? Two of the organizations report to the Minister of Environment and Labour and the appeals tribunal reports through to the Minister of Justice. And your agency reports through to the Ministry of Environment and Labour? Yes but we really report to our Board of Directors and the Chair reports through to [the Minister of Environment and Labour], … in terms of [where] the annual report goes. We’re not part of Government; we’re separate from Government. How do keep on improving and come up with new ideas? Our business planning process is obviously an opportunity to put changes in place… to make the changes that will continuously improve this organization. The Board and the Senior Executives set the direction and the targets and then we engage our Directors and their teams to figure out “how we’re going to get there”. Through that discussion will come all kinds of wonderful ideas about how we can improve what we’re doing, but through the lens of improving outcomes for return to work and prevention - that’s our focus. And that’s the lens we look through to determine what in fact we will do in any given year. We have a very long business planning process… it starts in the fall, culminates in June of the following year and we have a 5-year rolling plan and in June, we approve our business plan and our budget for the next year. We’re thinking ahead… June 2006 we approved the plan for …[January] 2007 and we would start those conversations in September 2005. At any given time, we have our view of a detailed business plan for the following 18 months and the rolling 5-year plan. You mentioned the balance score card… what are the key areas in the balance score card? They are: customer, operations – what are the key drivers of our performance, employees and financial. Those are the four areas. Three of those are in the drivers in the Framework for Excellence. And I guess employees would include learning and stuff like that… Yes… our goal from an employee perspective [is] to be a company that employees are proud of and proud to work for, that [is] our goal. It’s just been modified slightly (the language) by our Board but essentially that’s at the heart of it. We do an annual employee engagement satisfaction survey. Corporate Research Associates [is] a much respected independent research firm in Halifax. They do a lot of survey in Atlantic; we asked them to benchmark what we’re doing against other employers. They told us this most recent year, we’ve had the highest employee engagement. We’re second in Atlantic Canada of the employee satisfaction survey so we’re very proud of that. They said we are leading the pack in public sector of those they’ve surveyed. Are people (employees) involved in the balanced score card? Absolutely. We monitor how we’re doing on our score card on a monthly basis. We roll out those results to [our leadership team] monthly as well. We report to our Board quarterly; they want more trending than actual but we discuss it monthly [at] Leadership Forum (anyone involved in a leadership role). We have an Executive Committee, a Steering Committee and we have Leadership Forum. Leadership Forum is where any manager in this organization comes together once a month to talk about leadership issues and we talk about our performance. We roll out results and it’s incumbent on any member of Leadership Forum to take that back to their teams. There are about 60 people in the Leadership Forum. We also have a performance measurement and management system, an on-line tool that …[monitors] key performance measures …[pulled] from our legacy system (our databank) and they are on the desk of every employee who influences the outcomes of a particular measure. The employee can go in and see where they are in their case loads, how they’re doing with their own [targets]… what we’ve done is drilled the targets down to the team and the individual level and individuals now know how they’re doing. For example, one of our measures is duration time to make payment… the system will say, “You have 3 days to get [the] cheque out to make your target”… each individual sees their individual information. The team leaders see the teams’ information and the managers see the departments’ information. We put this system [in place] in the year 2000. We won an award through the International Association of Industrial Accidents Boards and Commissions... an international association on taking data and turning it into useful information. We developed this system with a partner… We also have a performance development plan through our HR department where every individual has targets for the year in terms of how they are going to influence the corporate measures. Having this system and being able to do that within a unionized environment … we have a tremendous relationship with our union. It’s a very collaborative and healthy labour relations environment. And what is this system called? It’s called PMMS… Performance Measurement and Management System. I want to move on to the customer focused driver… the company you use to do the employee satisfaction survey, do they also do the customer surveys? Yes… injured workers we survey monthly, and employers customers we survey quarterly… we survey those that have had a recent experience with us. The company will do a statistically significant sample, a representative sample mix of large and small… whatever methodology they need to use, so they can extrapolate them from across the province… Can you share what you do for training, to empowering employees? We have a very rigorous orientation program when they come in the door. We do behavioural based interviewing … the fit is so important in this organization. And we have a very comprehensive orientation program that lasts about a week before someone starts to job shadow in their role. The number of training [programs] that we offer our employees is huge. We have an on-going training curriculum that we offer, refreshers, and we have a calendar that comes out every year and training is predominantly focused on the claims business. We also have tool kits in place for employees that we update; tool kits on how to do their jobs - for areas where we need to be consistent in our decision-making to be fair; we have an intranet where we have all of our rules that we need to apply (the legislation, the regulations, the policies approved by our Board of Directors) … essentially the stakeholders in the System (being our customers) … represented by those on our Board make the rules for our System. The policies are binding on decision makers …[so] they’re on line so people can easily access those rules without having to leaf through paper. We also have electronic claim files… so that’s all on-line as well with all of the appropriate security in place as to who can access what screens. Is the training done internally or externally? Most of it is done internally and we have a Manager of Training and Development whose role is to put the curriculum in and organize all of that. We have subject matter experts we draw on within the organization but if there’s other training like suicide prevention, etc… we will obviously bring in the experts to deal with those kinds of areas. Are there other ways beside the surveys that customers can give you feedback? Yes. We have a Client Relations Officer whose role it is to deal with complaints. … We have a process where if someone is unhappy we encourage them to talk to the decision maker directly and their manager to try to get things resolved and we have an appeal system if they are not successful in that road. Because our customers are represented by our Board members, there’s a tremendous amount of opportunities to give feedback that way as well from employers and employees. One of our Board members is an injured worker representative, the other 3 members are members of organized labour and then we have 4 employer representatives. We have a stakeholder driven Board… Who nominates employees to the board? That’s part of the new governance process… the Federation of Labour, organized labour and injured workers associations put forward their nominees to the Ministry of Environment and Labour. Only nominees from organized associations can be appointed to our Board… no longer is it ok for government to appoint someone else. So it is truly a stakeholder driven organization. Our new governance model is unique. The make up of our Board being stakeholder driven… That’s who we’re here to serve so it makes sense that our customers govern the system. How do you link rewards and recognition to the strategic direction of the balance score card? To date we’ve left a lot of that to the discretion of the leaders in the organization. In the sense of team building and reward recognition, there hasn’t been a formalized program for that. But there are account lines in everybody’s cost centre and money allocated to do something with. The rewards and recognition needs to be linked with performance. The team building is something a little different from that. Since we’ve rolled out our new vision over the past 2 years and we have involved our employees in those discussions and the need to put new values in place, employees have said in the last employee survey, “We should formalize a rewards and recognition program so that it’s transparent, it’s fair, it’s well understood, it’s not ad hoc. And the foundation for any rewards & recognition program needs to be the core values of the organization and the behaviours that drive those core values and the outcomes, the performance and our balanced score cards.” We have a team of employees, as we speak, drafting the rewards and recognition program and we will have it in place by September. …and what we’re hearing … [demonstrates]… how far we’ve come in re-branding this organization … being loud and proud about where we work, because years ago people wouldn’t say that they worked at Workers Compensation; and now it’s very, very different. These employees are saying, “It’s not about the money, it’s about being recognized in a way that’s transparent and fair” and the “what”… they are suggesting an on-line catalogue of WCB apparel. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. That’s amazing. So again… that’s in process and driven by a team of employees… We sliced and diced our employee survey to know … there are a couple of key drivers of high satisfaction in this organization. It’s “having influence over decisions that affect my work”; it’s “getting regular feedback on how I’m doing by my manager or supervisor” and a general high morale, “I like coming to work everyday”. Those things are the top three drivers … of our satisfaction measures. So with the first one that I mentioned, “Having influence over decisions that affect my work”, to just launch from on high core values that are expected to drive behaviours, would just never work. They [employees] have to buy into it… who am I to know? The remarkable thing was that it could have been any 20 people in this organization, representative of all of the departments that came together and said, “Here is what we think should be the core values” and through research and talking to others, through looking at what other WCB or other organizations have done… and the remarkable thing is when you roll it out in small groups, nobody said, “this is missing or that’s missing”. Any policies on training, beside your training department, for folks taking courses to further their education that can be reimbursed? Absolutely. Most of our decision making positions require University background but we have a professional development account, we will support any kind of training or development that’s required for your job. No questions. We have a lot of people working on their University degrees, members of the executive team doing leadership development work. We have a new leadership development program that’s been championed by our HR department that is looking at… doing 360’s for every member of Leadership Forum. That’s happening over the next couple of months. St. Mary’s University has a new leadership institute and we asked them to design a 360 tool for us based on our core competencies that we put in place for being a leader in the organization. We’re hoping that we can, through trending, understand what comes out of the 360 analysis. We can identify where our leaders need development in a particular area and bring in that expertise. Part of our performance development plan requires the employee to identify what their personal development plan is for the year. They share their self-evaluation plan with their manager. They rate themselves as to how they are doing and then share that with their employer. Everybody sets their own goals, not waiting for their manager to tell them what to do and that’s challenging in a unionized environment, but everybody was totally on board with it - setting their performance goals and understanding overall what we need to achieve, so it’s congruent with the organization’s goals. Would their pay or remuneration depend on achieving performance goals? That’s a very good question. I want to put in pay for performance in this organization. I brought this to the Board of Directors and there’s a philosophical divide amongst the Board members about whether a pay for performance in a unionized environment is the way to go… so I backed off and said, “Let’s try it with the managers and tie remunerations with outcomes” because right now our remuneration is similar to government. It’s kind of a six step scale and it’s based on tenure, not results. We’ve linked it to results as much as we can, but on the labour side of the [Board] table a debate has been on-going on whether that’s appropriate. If people set their own performance goals, how do you make sure that they can reach the goals? … we know what we need to achieve on a monthly and quarterly basis on certain things that are measurable. The managers work with their teams to put in place what those particular individual goals are. So that you achieve the ultimate numbers that you need… Absolutely. How much of your operational budget is generated from serving your clients or customers versus funding by Ministry of Environment and Labour? Our entire budget is funded by the employers of the province. We’re not part of the consolidated fund. No tax payers’ dollars go into this organization, so we are completely [funded by] assessment premiums. Are the premiums in Nova Scotia the highest in the country? They are the second highest in the country. … there are two reasons: … we have one of the highest injury rates in the country; and for a whole host of social, cultural, practical reasons, we have the highest durations in the country. It takes longer for workers [in Nova Scotia] who are injured to go back to work than in any other jurisdiction in Canada … that is what is driving the cost - number of injuries times how long they are off work. … that then drives how much money we need to bring in assessment premiums. What we hadn’t done in the past is share with stakeholders, the community, what we could do about this - how they could in fact influence what they pay. We know the 80/20 rule… what we had to put in place is a very deliberate strategy; we call it the PEP… Priority Employer Program - where we know that the employers who are driving the majority of cost need our help. It’s a leadership driven model, so I go in and talk to the CEO and say, “Here is what’s happening in your organization on safety; on Workers Compensation, you’re paying X million dollars a year, you could have paid us X; your competitor[s] paid X [average]… the range in your industry group was this to this; and we can help you turn this around and improve your bottom line - and in so doing, you will save lives, you will have fewer injuries, you will have a more engaged and productive workforce”. Unless you get leadership at the top on this to change that situation, it’s not going to change. And we have a plan in place to save between now and 2016, we believe through more safe and timely return to work and bringing those employers who need our help the most, if they just came down to their industry average (what their competitors are paying in Nova Scotia), we could save $35 million dollars per year in the system just by getting to the average and having people go back to work in a more safe and timely way. By 2016, rates can come down. So that’s your 10 year goal… Yes… and in our [scorecard’s] financial quadrant, that’s what we’re looking at. Those are the things that we’re measuring. What’s the rate? We also have an unfunded liability that we’re wrestling with and it’s around $380 million dollars and it was created decades ago and because of that, the businesses in Nova Scotia right now pay $0.20 cents on every dollar to retire that debt. Unfunded liability means… if we were to close our doors today, we would be about $380 million dollars short of the money we have already promised to injured workers as a result of the injuries they’ve already had. … years ago, assessment premiums weren’t high enough to cover the claim costs in the system. There wasn’t enough money coming in… we have a plan in place - a financial strategy - to retire that unfunded in 2016 through the strategies of return to work and prevention, fewer injuries and people returning to work more safely and more quickly than they are doing now. It was originally going to be 2039, but our financial performance has been good through investment markets and other things, so we now got that down to 2016. How do you ensure that your organization is a healthy workplace? We understand the drivers of satisfaction… our employees are telling us what means the most to them so, we learn from our surveys and we respond. They’ve said we need a rewards recognition program formalized so we’re going to put one in. They’ve said that people need on-going feedback and more timely feedback, we’re put that as a performance requirement for every leader in the organization, so…asking and responding to peoples needs as employees is really important. We also partnered with Medavie Blue Cross and put in a wellness program so we’ve paid for individuals to go on-line and nurses come in and take heart rate, blood pressure and all that kind of information … there’s an on-line tool where people can measure and see if they’re at risk on a number of health factors. The program is called Alive and it’s a self assessment program, you plug in some of the factors that the nurse gave you in terms of height and weight, and it tells you your general health status. We just hired a wellness coordinator whose role will be to roll out programs for employees based on … trending information. So if we knew that a majority of our employees have challenges in terms of exercise, we might try to do some lunch hour programs and things like that. We have Weight Watchers that comes in at work and we have over 30 people registered in that. We have a personal development account that is something we negotiated with our union … we also have a health account that’s in addition to a very, very generous health and dental benefits program. We have an EAP. … the personal development account is $300 per year per employee that they can draw upon for fitness memberships or weight watchers membership. This is paid by WCB. We also have a health account that will start in 2007 and that will supplement the current health and dental plan … if there’s something that’s not getting paid for, and that’s $100 per year as well. We have modified schedules for our unionized employees – they can work flexed time, long days and take every second Friday off. This is through the whole year. How do you see improving the effectiveness and success of WCB as helping to improve the lives of Canadians? Our success is measured by how effective we are in achieving our vision. Our success is driven by whether we are able to prevent injuries from happening and whether we are able to assist employers and their employees navigate a more safe and timely return to work. We have targets around injury rate, we have targets around duration, how much time people are off work when they’re injured, and what employers and employees have told us [is] those are the most important things from their perspective. In terms of improving their outcome, they also are the two key drivers of the cost in the system; therefore, improving outcomes for employers and their employees will necessarily bring down the cost in the system and employers will enjoy lower premiums for their insurance. Everything is linked… and if we do a good job with that, we’ve been told by our stakeholders that we will be seen to bring value and not be seen as some sort of monopolistic kind of government. It looks like a lot of your clients could use the NQI Healthy Workplace framework. And how would you define success for WCB and on a more personal note, how would you define success from a business perspective? For WCB, if we’re doing our job, we’ll have a safer Nova Scotia in which to work and live. That’s it. … our employees are so key to achieving that outcome - … having an engaged team of employees is fundamental to achieving success for our customers. Therefore, success is measured by our customers not just saying that we deliver good service, because that’s where we were perhaps 5 – 6 years ago, we need to continue with all those service improvements that we made and have them rate us highly on that transactional service side but also on delivering outcomes. It’s that outcomes piece, I say, that would be new to this organization in the last couple of years. Our customers say that we’re successful in working with them because they’re partners with us in achieving the outcomes that they needed to achieve and that our employees are highly engaged and highly satisfied in doing that work. Just speaking personally, when I say employees I mean as well the executive team - that it’s a highly functioning, highly engaged executive team, that there’s a very positive working relationship with our Board of Directors, that the community more broadly (broader than just the customers that we serve everyday) … is seeing this organization as delivering value. …speaking personally, … I [need to] maintain a really healthy balance between my work and my personal life. It’s really very important. What keeps you up at night from a business perspective? It’s taking me a long time to answer that because there is not a lot keeping me up at night. Despite the fact that we have preventive challenges, everything that I’m talking about you need to understand when we have one of the highest injury rates and the highest durations, what we are talking about [is] fundamental cultural change that we’re making in this province. That’s what this is. We have Statistics Canada validating the fact that in Nova Scotia we have the highest incidence of self-reported disability in Canada. There are more people on CPP disability benefits in Nova Scotia than anywhere else in Canada. There are cultural issues in this province that have reached far beyond the WCB. We are trying to influence injury prevention outcomes and return to work outcomes in an environment that can be a real challenge because of the social, cultural, economic issues going on. I’m a really optimistic person. I think this is doable. I truly believe we can do this. And when I know that we have a highly engaged team of employees all rowing in the same direction and our stakeholders are saying, “You’re on the right track, WCB” and we’re gaining credibility in the community that we wouldn’t have enjoyed before, and our employees are proud to come to work everyday: … the kind of cultural change that we’re talking about is doable. We have a role to play and we can’t do it all on our own. So what would keep me awake at night is not being successful in the kind of influence we need to have in the community. I’m not worried about what we as an organization can do but the kinds of future goals that we talked about, eliminating a debt of $380 million, …saving $35 million a year in the system: that work [has to] happen in every workplace in this province because the WCB is not injuring 34, 000 people every year. We’re dealing with the results of that. Are we capable in Nova Scotia [of] the kind of cultural change that needs to take place? That’s what keeps me awake at night. I’m buoyed by the knowledge of what has been possible with Mothers Against Drunk Driving, with wearing seat belts, with smoking cessation and with those kinds of social issues... workplace safety is a similar issue. It’s an issue that there’s very little awareness that people are even at risk of being injured right now and we’re trying to do something about that. It’s that social change model… create awareness and behavioural [and] attitudinal change will follow. We have a role to play, but we are one of many players that need to get aligned in order for them to be successful. When I take a look at 20 years ago, people would not have thought twice about drinking and driving, and now with the younger generation, it wouldn’t even cross their minds to do it. It is possible, but it’s going to take some time. It’s beyond my tenure as CEO that we will start to see the success, I think. It’s cultural change that we’re talking about.


	Sunday, August 26, 2007




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Jan 16, 2007

View from the C-Suite: Interview with Nancy MacCready-Williams, CEO at WCB Nova Scotia

By:

Mr. Allan N. Ebedes
President & CEO
Canada Awards for Excellence & National Quality Institute (NQI)

How many full-time employees at WCB?

We have almost 500 employees divided between Halifax and … Sydney …the majority are here in Halifax.

So you’re responsible for the whole of Nova Scotia?

Yes, we insure about 18,000 employers here in the province…[equating to] around 300,000 employees.

That’s a lot of lives that you are responsible for.

That’s right. And those are the employers who actually pay us a premium to have workplace insurance in place. But with our prevention mandate, we’re really responsible for all of Nova Scotia in terms of education awareness around working safely.

The Canada Awards for Excellence and the Framework have various drivers. One of them is leadership which is obviously a key area. In your role as CEO of WCB, how important is it for you to be the evangelist to preaching the vision, mission and values of WCB?

I think it’s absolutely fundamental. I’ve been in this role just a little over two years, and one of the first things I did with the Board of Directors is work [to define] a vision for this organization and [to] roll that through the organization; at the same time, re-branding this organization. So “this is where we’re going in terms of our long term vision… so if we’re in Halifax and our vision is Vancouver, who do we need to be as an organization to get there”. We started those conversations with all of our employees; I led those in small working groups with every employee to talk about “who do we need to be to be successful?”

How many employees were involved in the process?

All 500… I would have had working groups with every team, to talk about and center around our core [responsibilities] of prevention and return to work. And [to] set our core values, [which] we didn’t have in place ... We talked to our employees as to who we need to be and that then led to conversations…”Ok… if this is who we need to be as an organization, then what is it that we need to do to get to where we’re going?” That led to the development of a long-term business plan and …[a] very detailed strategic business plan every year. So our employees have been part of that process. I facilitated that with a partner in our communications team.

How long did that take you?

First of all, we did it in cross-functional work groups [in order] to have different teams in the room. One of the big opportunities here is to break down the silos of our business lines and integrate ourselves in a way that centers around the customer. We need to be customer centric. We’re not right now… what we’ve heard is that we have 3 distinct lines of business. There’s the claims side; the insurance side where an employer purchases insurance from us – so, that’s revenue per collection side; and then there’s the prevention side. As employers, they need service from all three business lines but they don’t know which door to knock on and they talk to different teams. So what came out loud and clear from our employees is the need to integrate to improve outcomes for our customers. That has led to the development of a new service delivery model centered around the customers who most need our help. [As a result]… we’re going to organize ourselves around the 18,000 customers who need our help the most, who drive 80% of the cost in our system. Number One: we can save lives and Number Two: we can improve outcomes for those injured and for the employers who employ them by insuring a more safe and timely return to work. Getting back to your question about the vision and the mission… that was a grass root…

What is your vision?

“Nova Scotia safe and secure for workplace injury” is our vision and we’re far from that. We have 34,000 injuries every year in this province and every two weeks someone dies on the job. So we are far and away from “Nova Scotia safe and secure for workplace injury”.

Would you say that the 500 employees are clear on what the vision is?

Yes… I do and we use every opportunity to remind them. Every six months, we go off-site with all of our employees for employee information sessions. “How are we doing on our performance, what are the key issues, what are the things we should celebrate and how are we doing on our goals, performance measures, balanced score card?” What is so amazing is that this has been an organic process and it’s driven by our employees. Our employees are the ones who are re-branding this organization as we go because we understand that everything we do around the customer needs to be aligned. People need to understand, when they come to work everyday, how it is what they do contributes to the overall success of the organization and the customers we serve.

Who do you see as a customer… the 18,000 employers or the 300,000 employees? Do you distinguish between customers and clients?

That’s a very interesting question that we’ve been debating for two years. We’ve used the word customer and client interchangeably and we’re now going to talk about those that we serve as our customer. The challenge in a monopolistic organization like ours … [is that] people don’t have a choice [but] to deal with us. But I’d like to think about [it as] customer service and we as a team would like to think about [it as] customer service. For example, when someone goes into Canadian Tire or Sears, everything that organization does is designed to have a highly engaged, satisfied customer who wants to come back. A loyal customer and a satisfied customer. What we want to create [that] here for those who have to deal with us, either because they paid the premium (the employer) or unfortunately, they are injured on the job and we’re here to help them. If we became competitive in a competitive environment, they would choose to come back to deal with us because of the service they’ve received, the outcomes that we’ve jointly achieved and the value that we bring.

You mentioned the vision… was there a mission that came out of that?

The mission is still in development right now and it’s to deliver the vision. Our Board of Directors immediately went to five goals and then some specific measures under each of those goals. I said, “We need to launch a mission… we need to set core values in this organization” so now we have key value statements that were just approved in June at our Board. We used the exact same process to roll out the vision that we [used to] roll out the values. That came together with [participation from] every team … we had a group of employees initially come up with the value statements and then we rolled those out to every team. It was remarkably consistent. We only have 3 values… and they’re around a caring and compassionate organization, an organization that’s a safety champion and an organization with a can-do attitude. Those values are now becoming the basis for a new rewards and recognition process that our employees are developing. We have a lot of involvement.

As the CEO, you’re facilitating this thing but everybody is getting involved in the whole process and not being mandated from the top. Do you think that’s the role that a CEO needs to be out there reminding everybody why they come to work everyday?

Yes. I’m a champion and workers compensation is a challenging business. It’s difficult work that our teams do everyday. They have to deal with tragedies day in and day out and it’s really important to keep people focused on the end state. Why are we here? We survey our employees and our customers and have done so for many years. We use an independent corporate research associate. We do our injured workers monthly, our employers quarterly and our employees annually. We take a look at our performance on a monthly basis at the executive level and roll that out to the organization in terms of where we are with our targets for the year. Our employees have said that they work here because it’s a really great place to work and they can make a difference in peoples’ lives. The people, who choose to live here and work here do so because they believe in customer service and they can make an impact. We never hear it’s about the salaries… it’s to make a difference. It’s wonderful to be able to lead an organization of like-minded people who feel that way. You rise above the individual tragedy that you’re dealing with and you know that you can help that person and you do, but to be in the business of saving lives is a marvellous thing.

Do you see yourself as being in a business of saving lives?

Yes; and helping those who are injured, despite everybody’s intent to try to prevent that from happening, to get back to work as soon as it’s safe to do so.

In terms of corporate governance, you mentioned the Board of Directors, how often do they meet?

They meet monthly except for the two summer months, July and August. There are 3 working committees of the Board who meet also in addition to regular monthly Board meetings. It’s made up of stakeholders… 4 employer representatives, 4 employee representatives, a Chair and Deputy Chair; and the business of the organization drives their agenda. I’m a member of the Board as well and [an] executive corporate secretary. There has been a lot of work done on governance with our Board in the past two years. A brand new governance model and the actual make up of our Board has changed in the last year. Last September, … 6 out of 8 of our members were brand new… we are part of a larger system, called “The Workplace Safety and Insurance System” and WCB is one of 4 partner agencies [within the System] working together in Nova Scotia. There’s [also] [Occupational Health & Safety] OHS down at the Department of Environment and Labour, the enforcement side of safety, there’s an appeals tribunal and there’s a workers’ advisor program assisting injured workers with their appeals. We now have in place a Workplace Safety and Insurance System strategic plan for the entire system - not just for WCB - and we’ve just had approved systems performance measures for the System that each agenc[y] is intended to support. The other agencies don’t have their own Boards but there’s a committee called, “Systems Goals Advisory Committee” made up of stakeholder representatives, [including] two [Workers’ Compensation] Board members …they set the strategic priorities for the System. So our Board of Directors really is responsible for the governance of this organization and influences the broader system as well. It’s very complex.

So there’s WCB, the appeals …

Yes… appeals tribunal (we call WCAT), the WAP (the workers advisor program) and as well OHS down at [the] Department of Environment and Labour, and soon to be in place a stakeholder councillor program to assist employers [and] workers navigate the system.

So there are quite a few levels and the business plan is congruent... so people are running in the same direction.

Exactly.

Are those organizations accountable to WCB or are they independent?

Two of the organizations report to the Minister of Environment and Labour and the appeals tribunal reports through to the Minister of Justice.

And your agency reports through to the Ministry of Environment and Labour?

Yes but we really report to our Board of Directors and the Chair reports through to [the Minister of Environment and Labour], … in terms of [where] the annual report goes. We’re not part of Government; we’re separate from Government.

How do keep on improving and come up with new ideas?

Our business planning process is obviously an opportunity to put changes in place… to make the changes that will continuously improve this organization. The Board and the Senior Executives set the direction and the targets and then we engage our Directors and their teams to figure out “how we’re going to get there”. Through that discussion will come all kinds of wonderful ideas about how we can improve what we’re doing, but through the lens of improving outcomes for return to work and prevention - that’s our focus. And that’s the lens we look through to determine what in fact we will do in any given year. We have a very long business planning process… it starts in the fall, culminates in June of the following year and we have a 5-year rolling plan and in June, we approve our business plan and our budget for the next year. We’re thinking ahead… June 2006 we approved the plan for …[January] 2007 and we would start those conversations in September 2005. At any given time, we have our view of a detailed business plan for the following 18 months and the rolling 5-year plan.

You mentioned the balance score card… what are the key areas in the balance score card?

They are: customer, operations – what are the key drivers of our performance, employees and financial. Those are the four areas.

Three of those are in the drivers in the Framework for Excellence. And I guess employees would include learning and stuff like that…

Yes… our goal from an employee perspective [is] to be a company that employees are proud of and proud to work for, that [is] our goal. It’s just been modified slightly (the language) by our Board but essentially that’s at the heart of it. We do an annual employee engagement satisfaction survey. Corporate Research Associates [is] a much respected independent research firm in Halifax. They do a lot of survey in Atlantic; we asked them to benchmark what we’re doing against other employers. They told us this most recent year, we’ve had the highest employee engagement. We’re second in Atlantic Canada of the employee satisfaction survey so we’re very proud of that. They said we are leading the pack in public sector of those they’ve surveyed.

Are people (employees) involved in the balanced score card?

Absolutely. We monitor how we’re doing on our score card on a monthly basis. We roll out those results to [our leadership team] monthly as well. We report to our Board quarterly; they want more trending than actual but we discuss it monthly [at] Leadership Forum (anyone involved in a leadership role). We have an Executive Committee, a Steering Committee and we have Leadership Forum. Leadership Forum is where any manager in this organization comes together once a month to talk about leadership issues and we talk about our performance. We roll out results and it’s incumbent on any member of Leadership Forum to take that back to their teams. There are about 60 people in the Leadership Forum. We also have a performance measurement and management system, an on-line tool that …[monitors] key performance measures …[pulled] from our legacy system (our databank) and they are on the desk of every employee who influences the outcomes of a particular measure. The employee can go in and see where they are in their case loads, how they’re doing with their own [targets]… what we’ve done is drilled the targets down to the team and the individual level and individuals now know how they’re doing. For example, one of our measures is duration time to make payment… the system will say, “You have 3 days to get [the] cheque out to make your target”… each individual sees their individual information. The team leaders see the teams’ information and the managers see the departments’ information. We put this system [in place] in the year 2000. We won an award through the International Association of Industrial Accidents Boards and Commissions... an international association on taking data and turning it into useful information. We developed this system with a partner… We also have a performance development plan through our HR department where every individual has targets for the year in terms of how they are going to influence the corporate measures. Having this system and being able to do that within a unionized environment … we have a tremendous relationship with our union. It’s a very collaborative and healthy labour relations environment.

And what is this system called?

It’s called PMMS… Performance Measurement and Management System.

I want to move on to the customer focused driver… the company you use to do the employee satisfaction survey, do they also do the customer surveys?

Yes… injured workers we survey monthly, and employers customers we survey quarterly… we survey those that have had a recent experience with us. The company will do a statistically significant sample, a representative sample mix of large and small… whatever methodology they need to use, so they can extrapolate them from across the province…

Can you share what you do for training, to empowering employees?

We have a very rigorous orientation program when they come in the door. We do behavioural based interviewing … the fit is so important in this organization. And we have a very comprehensive orientation program that lasts about a week before someone starts to job shadow in their role. The number of training [programs] that we offer our employees is huge. We have an on-going training curriculum that we offer, refreshers, and we have a calendar that comes out every year and training is predominantly focused on the claims business. We also have tool kits in place for employees that we update; tool kits on how to do their jobs - for areas where we need to be consistent in our decision-making to be fair; we have an intranet where we have all of our rules that we need to apply (the legislation, the regulations, the policies approved by our Board of Directors) … essentially the stakeholders in the System (being our customers) … represented by those on our Board make the rules for our System. The policies are binding on decision makers …[so] they’re on line so people can easily access those rules without having to leaf through paper. We also have electronic claim files… so that’s all on-line as well with all of the appropriate security in place as to who can access what screens.

Is the training done internally or externally?

Most of it is done internally and we have a Manager of Training and Development whose role is to put the curriculum in and organize all of that. We have subject matter experts we draw on within the organization but if there’s other training like suicide prevention, etc… we will obviously bring in the experts to deal with those kinds of areas.

Are there other ways beside the surveys that customers can give you feedback?

Yes. We have a Client Relations Officer whose role it is to deal with complaints. … We have a process where if someone is unhappy we encourage them to talk to the decision maker directly and their manager to try to get things resolved and we have an appeal system if they are not successful in that road. Because our customers are represented by our Board members, there’s a tremendous amount of opportunities to give feedback that way as well from employers and employees. One of our Board members is an injured worker representative, the other 3 members are members of organized labour and then we have 4 employer representatives. We have a stakeholder driven Board…

Who nominates employees to the board?

That’s part of the new governance process… the Federation of Labour, organized labour and injured workers associations put forward their nominees to the Ministry of Environment and Labour. Only nominees from organized associations can be appointed to our Board… no longer is it ok for government to appoint someone else. So it is truly a stakeholder driven organization. Our new governance model is unique. The make up of our Board being stakeholder driven… That’s who we’re here to serve so it makes sense that our customers govern the system.

How do you link rewards and recognition to the strategic direction of the balance score card?

To date we’ve left a lot of that to the discretion of the leaders in the organization. In the sense of team building and reward recognition, there hasn’t been a formalized program for that. But there are account lines in everybody’s cost centre and money allocated to do something with. The rewards and recognition needs to be linked with performance. The team building is something a little different from that. Since we’ve rolled out our new vision over the past 2 years and we have involved our employees in those discussions and the need to put new values in place, employees have said in the last employee survey, “We should formalize a rewards and recognition program so that it’s transparent, it’s fair, it’s well understood, it’s not ad hoc. And the foundation for any rewards & recognition program needs to be the core values of the organization and the behaviours that drive those core values and the outcomes, the performance and our balanced score cards.” We have a team of employees, as we speak, drafting the rewards and recognition program and we will have it in place by September. …and what we’re hearing … [demonstrates]… how far we’ve come in re-branding this organization … being loud and proud about where we work, because years ago people wouldn’t say that they worked at Workers Compensation; and now it’s very, very different. These employees are saying, “It’s not about the money, it’s about being recognized in a way that’s transparent and fair” and the “what”… they are suggesting an on-line catalogue of WCB apparel. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. That’s amazing. So again… that’s in process and driven by a team of employees… We sliced and diced our employee survey to know … there are a couple of key drivers of high satisfaction in this organization. It’s “having influence over decisions that affect my work”; it’s “getting regular feedback on how I’m doing by my manager or supervisor” and a general high morale, “I like coming to work everyday”. Those things are the top three drivers … of our satisfaction measures. So with the first one that I mentioned, “Having influence over decisions that affect my work”, to just launch from on high core values that are expected to drive behaviours, would just never work. They [employees] have to buy into it… who am I to know? The remarkable thing was that it could have been any 20 people in this organization, representative of all of the departments that came together and said, “Here is what we think should be the core values” and through research and talking to others, through looking at what other WCB or other organizations have done… and the remarkable thing is when you roll it out in small groups, nobody said, “this is missing or that’s missing”.

Any policies on training, beside your training department, for folks taking courses to further their education that can be reimbursed?

Absolutely. Most of our decision making positions require University background but we have a professional development account, we will support any kind of training or development that’s required for your job. No questions. We have a lot of people working on their University degrees, members of the executive team doing leadership development work. We have a new leadership development program that’s been championed by our HR department that is looking at… doing 360’s for every member of Leadership Forum. That’s happening over the next couple of months. St. Mary’s University has a new leadership institute and we asked them to design a 360 tool for us based on our core competencies that we put in place for being a leader in the organization. We’re hoping that we can, through trending, understand what comes out of the 360 analysis. We can identify where our leaders need development in a particular area and bring in that expertise. Part of our performance development plan requires the employee to identify what their personal development plan is for the year. They share their self-evaluation plan with their manager. They rate themselves as to how they are doing and then share that with their employer. Everybody sets their own goals, not waiting for their manager to tell them what to do and that’s challenging in a unionized environment, but everybody was totally on board with it - setting their performance goals and understanding overall what we need to achieve, so it’s congruent with the organization’s goals.

Would their pay or remuneration depend on achieving performance goals?

That’s a very good question. I want to put in pay for performance in this organization. I brought this to the Board of Directors and there’s a philosophical divide amongst the Board members about whether a pay for performance in a unionized environment is the way to go… so I backed off and said, “Let’s try it with the managers and tie remunerations with outcomes” because right now our remuneration is similar to government. It’s kind of a six step scale and it’s based on tenure, not results. We’ve linked it to results as much as we can, but on the labour side of the [Board] table a debate has been on-going on whether that’s appropriate.

If people set their own performance goals, how do you make sure that they can reach the goals?

… we know what we need to achieve on a monthly and quarterly basis on certain things that are measurable. The managers work with their teams to put in place what those particular individual goals are.

So that you achieve the ultimate numbers that you need…

Absolutely.

How much of your operational budget is generated from serving your clients or customers versus funding by Ministry of Environment and Labour?

Our entire budget is funded by the employers of the province. We’re not part of the consolidated fund. No tax payers’ dollars go into this organization, so we are completely [funded by] assessment premiums.

Are the premiums in Nova Scotia the highest in the country?

They are the second highest in the country. … there are two reasons: … we have one of the highest injury rates in the country; and for a whole host of social, cultural, practical reasons, we have the highest durations in the country. It takes longer for workers [in Nova Scotia] who are injured to go back to work than in any other jurisdiction in Canada … that is what is driving the cost - number of injuries times how long they are off work. … that then drives how much money we need to bring in assessment premiums. What we hadn’t done in the past is share with stakeholders, the community, what we could do about this - how they could in fact influence what they pay. We know the 80/20 rule… what we had to put in place is a very deliberate strategy; we call it the PEP… Priority Employer Program - where we know that the employers who are driving the majority of cost need our help. It’s a leadership driven model, so I go in and talk to the CEO and say, “Here is what’s happening in your organization on safety; on Workers Compensation, you’re paying X million dollars a year, you could have paid us X; your competitor[s] paid X [average]… the range in your industry group was this to this; and we can help you turn this around and improve your bottom line - and in so doing, you will save lives, you will have fewer injuries, you will have a more engaged and productive workforce”. Unless you get leadership at the top on this to change that situation, it’s not going to change. And we have a plan in place to save between now and 2016, we believe through more safe and timely return to work and bringing those employers who need our help the most, if they just came down to their industry average (what their competitors are paying in Nova Scotia), we could save $35 million dollars per year in the system just by getting to the average and having people go back to work in a more safe and timely way. By 2016, rates can come down.

So that’s your 10 year goal…

Yes… and in our [scorecard’s] financial quadrant, that’s what we’re looking at. Those are the things that we’re measuring. What’s the rate? We also have an unfunded liability that we’re wrestling with and it’s around $380 million dollars and it was created decades ago and because of that, the businesses in Nova Scotia right now pay $0.20 cents on every dollar to retire that debt. Unfunded liability means… if we were to close our doors today, we would be about $380 million dollars short of the money we have already promised to injured workers as a result of the injuries they’ve already had. … years ago, assessment premiums weren’t high enough to cover the claim costs in the system. There wasn’t enough money coming in… we have a plan in place - a financial strategy - to retire that unfunded in 2016 through the strategies of return to work and prevention, fewer injuries and people returning to work more safely and more quickly than they are doing now. It was originally going to be 2039, but our financial performance has been good through investment markets and other things, so we now got that down to 2016.

How do you ensure that your organization is a healthy workplace?

We understand the drivers of satisfaction… our employees are telling us what means the most to them so, we learn from our surveys and we respond. They’ve said we need a rewards recognition program formalized so we’re going to put one in. They’ve said that people need on-going feedback and more timely feedback, we’re put that as a performance requirement for every leader in the organization, so…asking and responding to peoples needs as employees is really important. We also partnered with Medavie Blue Cross and put in a wellness program so we’ve paid for individuals to go on-line and nurses come in and take heart rate, blood pressure and all that kind of information … there’s an on-line tool where people can measure and see if they’re at risk on a number of health factors. The program is called Alive and it’s a self assessment program, you plug in some of the factors that the nurse gave you in terms of height and weight, and it tells you your general health status. We just hired a wellness coordinator whose role will be to roll out programs for employees based on … trending information. So if we knew that a majority of our employees have challenges in terms of exercise, we might try to do some lunch hour programs and things like that. We have Weight Watchers that comes in at work and we have over 30 people registered in that. We have a personal development account that is something we negotiated with our union … we also have a health account that’s in addition to a very, very generous health and dental benefits program. We have an EAP. … the personal development account is $300 per year per employee that they can draw upon for fitness memberships or weight watchers membership. This is paid by WCB. We also have a health account that will start in 2007 and that will supplement the current health and dental plan … if there’s something that’s not getting paid for, and that’s $100 per year as well. We have modified schedules for our unionized employees – they can work flexed time, long days and take every second Friday off. This is through the whole year.

How do you see improving the effectiveness and success of WCB as helping to improve the lives of Canadians?

Our success is measured by how effective we are in achieving our vision. Our success is driven by whether we are able to prevent injuries from happening and whether we are able to assist employers and their employees navigate a more safe and timely return to work. We have targets around injury rate, we have targets around duration, how much time people are off work when they’re injured, and what employers and employees have told us [is] those are the most important things from their perspective. In terms of improving their outcome, they also are the two key drivers of the cost in the system; therefore, improving outcomes for employers and their employees will necessarily bring down the cost in the system and employers will enjoy lower premiums for their insurance. Everything is linked… and if we do a good job with that, we’ve been told by our stakeholders that we will be seen to bring value and not be seen as some sort of monopolistic kind of government.

It looks like a lot of your clients could use the NQI Healthy Workplace framework.
And how would you define success for WCB and on a more personal note, how would you define success from a business perspective?

For WCB, if we’re doing our job, we’ll have a safer Nova Scotia in which to work and live. That’s it. … our employees are so key to achieving that outcome - … having an engaged team of employees is fundamental to achieving success for our customers. Therefore, success is measured by our customers not just saying that we deliver good service, because that’s where we were perhaps 5 – 6 years ago, we need to continue with all those service improvements that we made and have them rate us highly on that transactional service side but also on delivering outcomes. It’s that outcomes piece, I say, that would be new to this organization in the last couple of years. Our customers say that we’re successful in working with them because they’re partners with us in achieving the outcomes that they needed to achieve and that our employees are highly engaged and highly satisfied in doing that work.

Just speaking personally, when I say employees I mean as well the executive team - that it’s a highly functioning, highly engaged executive team, that there’s a very positive working relationship with our Board of Directors, that the community more broadly (broader than just the customers that we serve everyday) … is seeing this organization as delivering value. …speaking personally, … I [need to] maintain a really healthy balance between my work and my personal life. It’s really very important.

What keeps you up at night from a business perspective?

It’s taking me a long time to answer that because there is not a lot keeping me up at night. Despite the fact that we have preventive challenges, everything that I’m talking about you need to understand when we have one of the highest injury rates and the highest durations, what we are talking about [is] fundamental cultural change that we’re making in this province. That’s what this is. We have Statistics Canada validating the fact that in Nova Scotia we have the highest incidence of self-reported disability in Canada. There are more people on CPP disability benefits in Nova Scotia than anywhere else in Canada. There are cultural issues in this province that have reached far beyond the WCB. We are trying to influence injury prevention outcomes and return to work outcomes in an environment that can be a real challenge because of the social, cultural, economic issues going on. I’m a really optimistic person. I think this is doable. I truly believe we can do this. And when I know that we have a highly engaged team of employees all rowing in the same direction and our stakeholders are saying, “You’re on the right track, WCB” and we’re gaining credibility in the community that we wouldn’t have enjoyed before, and our employees are proud to come to work everyday: … the kind of cultural change that we’re talking about is doable. We have a role to play and we can’t do it all on our own. So what would keep me awake at night is not being successful in the kind of influence we need to have in the community. I’m not worried about what we as an organization can do but the kinds of future goals that we talked about, eliminating a debt of $380 million, …saving $35 million a year in the system: that work [has to] happen in every workplace in this province because the WCB is not injuring 34, 000 people every year. We’re dealing with the results of that. Are we capable in Nova Scotia [of] the kind of cultural change that needs to take place? That’s what keeps me awake at night. I’m buoyed by the knowledge of what has been possible with Mothers Against Drunk Driving, with wearing seat belts, with smoking cessation and with those kinds of social issues... workplace safety is a similar issue. It’s an issue that there’s very little awareness that people are even at risk of being injured right now and we’re trying to do something about that. It’s that social change model… create awareness and behavioural [and] attitudinal change will follow. We have a role to play, but we are one of many players that need to get aligned in order for them to be successful. When I take a look at 20 years ago, people would not have thought twice about drinking and driving, and now with the younger generation, it wouldn’t even cross their minds to do it. It is possible, but it’s going to take some time. It’s beyond my tenure as CEO that we will start to see the success, I think. It’s cultural change that we’re talking about.

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