WSIB is improving return-to-work process

Re Employers are firing injured workers unjustly, March 14 The WSIB agrees that businesses should never wrongfully terminate people following a workplace injury or illness. The WSIB’s ultimate goal is to ensure a successful return-to-work outcome for everyone.

Every year, the WSIB processes about 250,000 claims. The story cites a total of 55 claims that were appealed to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal (WSIAT) over the course of a decade, 28 of which were overturned by WSIAT. That’s 28 of about 2.5 million claims processed in that period, or about 0.001 per cent of decisions.

Still, every claim is important and we want to get it right. That’s why we brought return-to-work services back inside the WSIB in 2011. That’s when we started changing the way our case managers and return-to-work spe- cialists work together with the person who was injured at work and their employer on return-to-work solutions. Since then, we’ve made improvements to the way we support people in the return-to-work process, year over year.

As we have been more actively involved in this process, and with increased training, we can now better see when an employer may not be meeting its obligations. Our first effort is to step in and help them correct the issue. In our experience, this usually works. In fact, in 2017 working with the injured person and the employer, we were able to rectify the issue in 96 per cent of 126 cases.

The numbers show that we are improving outcomes for people who have been injured. We are looking forward and will continually work to do better. Tom Teahen, WSIB president and CEO