Senior management is doubling down on controversial changes at the provincial workers’ compensation board, as employees blast the organization’s new “call centre” model and warn that failure to address understaffing and service issues could have “life and death implications” for injured workers, according to documents obtained by the Star.It comes after the Star revealed that staff at the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board raised concerns last fall about the new service delivery model, calling on the board to bolster declining front-line staff numbers in order to eliminate “embarrassing” wait times for injured workers and prevent staff burnout.But in a subsequent internal blog post entitled “The Toronto Star called. I answered,” WSIB chief operating officer Brian Jarvis defended the new approach, which he said was successfully speeding up claim decisions, benefit payments and getting workers back on the job more quickly.Under the new model rolled out in the summer, injured workers’ claims no longer have a dedicated case manager. Instead, claimants go into a general call pool where cases are triaged based on their complexity.Jarvis’s post said 95 per cent of claim decisions were now made in 10 days, up from 89 per cent in the summer, and 60 per cent of injured workers were back on the job within 10 days, compared to 51 per cent previously.Jarvis later commented that “simply adding more staff” was not a solution to employees’ concerns about workload, according to a copy of the posts accessed by the Star through a Freedom of Information request. But the blog has generated fresh blowback from employees, according to 27 staff responses obtained by the Star. “Mr. Jarvis you may have answered the bell but you are not winning the battle,” said one staff member. “Statistics as we know, can and will be manipulated to make one look favourable”In another, an e ...
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