We strive to evolve the workers’ compensation system, putting workers at the centre of their recovery and employers at the centre of guiding a safe and successful return to work.
By thoughtfully leveraging new technologies, we’re finding creative ways to streamline our processes and expand self-serve options for workers and employers to manage their claims. This allows us to direct more time toward meaningful conversations that support care and recovery.
We streamlined processes related to long-term wage loss and modified work, reducing nearly 26,000 hours of routine administration. We achieved this by adding new functionality to our internal tools including auto-population features, checklists and a modified-work planner. Refining these processes creates more opportunities and time for our clients to have valuable conversations with their case managers during their recovery and return-to-work planning. This leads to better outcomes and greater satisfaction for clients and staff alike.
Smart tasks guide new staff with step-by-step prompts based on disability management best practices and streamline tasks for more seasoned decision makers. This builds consistent skill and experience, creates capacity for our experts and improves our service delivery to make sure workers get the best, and most timely, treatment and support.
Our people-focused technology is making it easier than ever for workers and employers to access claim information and collaborate on return-to-work planning. The worker mobile app allows workers to see where they are in their recovery process and view information about modified work so they can share ideas and discuss return-to-work options with their employer and case manager.
Employers have a new digital dashboard that provides up-to-date information about their worker’s readiness for work, enabling them to start the return-to-work conversation as early as possible. A premium simulator and key performance indicators help employers understand how timely modified work can improve their performance and reduce their premiums.
A shift to remote work and the growing use of technology are among the factors redefining roles and changing skill sets in today’s workplace. As we navigate this new reality, we continue to deliver opportunities for injured workers to recover and return safely to work. We’re developing ways to keep workers attached to their jobs by reimagining modified-work opportunities, enhancing partnerships and leveraging data.
Workers benefit from care plans that meet their unique needs to achieve a safe and successful return to their job. We’re consulting with return-to-work providers to find ways to enhance our digital tools to support easier communication and collaboration between the people involved in a worker’s return to work. In 2023 we completed the design phase of this work. From here we will create a new platform to share insights and information that are timely and facilitate key discussions between service providers, claim owners and employers. This is a foundational step to strengthen collaborative care planning going forward.
Thousands of workers benefit from modified work as part of a successful recovery. We’ve created a model that flags potential barriers that may prevent a worker from progressing to their full duties. This enables us to intervene at the right time—with the right supports—to help keep their recovery on track.
The employer mobile app offers new self-serve tools to guide an employer through return-to-work planning by providing updates on their worker’s physical abilities, and by offering examples of industry-specific modified duties to help develop a modified work plan. This is an industry-leading product that provides online access to tools designed specifically for employers to manage a successful return to work.
We’ve made great strides in our understanding of mental health and psychological injuries and continue to see growth in these sensitive and complex claims. Early intervention and engaging workers, employers and partners are key to reducing the impact of work-related psychological injuries and helping workers achieve successful outcomes.
A team of highly experienced and multidisciplinary staff collaborated with claim owners to design custom return-to-work care plans for those workers struggling to achieve a successful return to work. These interventions led to improved collaboration between employers, workers and service providers to support these workers in their recovery. We made significant progress, helping 9% of these workers move to the next stage in their care plan. Though we fell short of our target by 1%, we gained valuable insights from the process that will inform future strategies to support these workers.
The impact of a psychological workplace injury on a person’s life can be profound and long-lasting. Our goal is to reduce this impact by finding new ways to help workers recover as safely and quickly as possible. Last year we identified workers with post-traumatic stress who were most at risk of prolonged disability (greater than one year) using a predictive machine-learning model. This allowed us to act proactively to engage the worker, their treatment providers and their employer to discuss the best combination of supports to suit their unique needs. This collaborative approach helped reduce the duration of disability by 3% (on a target of 5%). That small number had a big impact on many people with serious and complex needs.
Building on previous success, we offered learning opportunities to our network of psychological service providers to help them gain a better understanding of the benefits of returning to work for workers with psychological injuries. In 2023, we surpassed our participation goal of 100 as 238 providers participated in virtual learning, 122 took advantage of self-directed learning and 138 received personalized coaching. This engagement and collaboration helped 659 workers with a psychological injury successfully achieve the wellness needed to re-engage in work, contributing to a 3% reduction in total disability days, falling short of our 10% goal.
Psychological injury providers are key partners in return-to-work planning. Helping them understand the importance and value of supporting workers to participate in modified or alternate employment is the first crucial step in their patients’ return-to-work success.
Technology has changed the way we live, work and connect with each other. We continue to invest in technology to improve our ability to securely deliver services to customers, partners and staff. Our digital transformation helps us enhance our client experiences and build business efficiencies while continuing to strengthen cybersecurity.
We have a wealth of data to draw from to inform decisions that will help our clients and partners achieve their best return-to-work outcome and lead to improved organizational performance. Using machine learning to analyze data, we are discovering ways workers can receive the treatment and support they need more quickly. We’re improving our service delivery with a data platform that’s fast and efficient and reduces implementation time for future projects.
As our technology evolves, so do our safeguards. We want our clients to have peace of mind knowing their personal information is secure no matter how they connect with us. We’ve introduced a new security platform with two-step verification that allows users to connect easily across web and mobile channels using a single login. We’ve also created a comprehensive road map to refine security protocols, processes and controls across our technology ecosystem, ensuring our clients can remain confident in our responsive and robust privacy and data protection measures.
Technology has revealed new opportunities for our clients and partners to interact with us. This year we evaluated core business applications to shape our future technology strategies as part of our focus to provide a superior customer experience. We launched efforts to enhance the payment batch process to make sure we continue to deliver reliable and timely payments to the workers who rely on them. In addition, we reviewed internal systems including establishing a refreshed information architecture for a modern intranet that will guide our plans to optimize experience and give staff the tools they need to thrive and deliver exceptional client care.