Why Your WCB Claims Are a Leadership Problem and How to Fix it
The key to most organizations success is the way their people work together to achieve a common goal. As a health and safety manager it can be difficult to know when your team is headed for disaster. The truth is, there are signs to help you build a strong team, if you know where to look.
TL;DR: WCB claim failures are often framed as employee issues, but this article reframes the problem as a leadership and organizational culture issue. Leaders set the tone for injury response, communication, and trust. When leaders are disengaged, inconsistent, or reactive, claims spiral. The article urges employers to adopt a shared accountability mindset where HR, safety, and senior management align on injury prevention, communication, and support.
Why WCB Claims Reveal Deeper Problems in Your Company
No one wants to deal with WCB claims. They’re an interruption to our day and our business. For many of you, when a worker reports symptoms, this usually kicks off a series of events involving a lot of people asking questions.
The burden falls on you to lead your team and get the answers everyone is looking for. You’re coordinating a group of people to get the information you’ll need to manage this situation.
A WCB claim can be the mircroscope that shows where a system needs improvement. It could be in the way your people get information, departments that refuse to cooperate, or senior management that puts unnecessary pressure on dealing with this issue.
Companies that can manage WCB claims effectively do so because they took a proactive approach to preparing for them. They’ve put systems in place and trained their people on their way of handling things.
There are some companies that only get a few claims or less per year. This can lead into a false sense of security, but in reality it’s those companies that need to invest in a proactive approach because they’re the companies that get the most affected financially when a WCB claim happens.
When a WCB claim happens it’s those in leadership positions that decide the outcomes of the claim. This is because of the decisions they made (or didn’t make) will ultimately affect frontline staff that would be responsible for gathering information.
When a manager chooses not to invest in proactive approaches like a WCB leadership training program, they’re choosing to prevent their team from minimizing the effects of a WCB claim.. They choose instead to blame their team for their lackluster performance.
How can you expect your people to respond to a situation if you haven’t prepared them properly. Even the best athletes in the world who know how to play their game rely on coaches to teach them the system they’re supposed to play in.
3 Root Causes of Poor WCB Claim Management (And How to Fix Them)
If your company is struggling with WCB claims management, there are usually 3 reasons this is happening.
A company is usually made up of: employees, departments, and the overall organization. A breakdown can occur at any one of these 3 levels. You can have individual employees that affect the performance of a unit. A department that isn’t performing and hurts the organization. Lastly, an organization can set their people up to fail when they don’t provide the right direction, resources, and support.
Some of them know exactly what the problem is and how to fix it. They’re just looking for WCB consulting support for employers like me to help. Others know they have some kind of problem, but no clue how to fix it. Then there is a group that was told they have a problem by someone in the company, but they don’t know what it is or where to get started in fixing it.
I’m here to help you figure it out.
As the leader of an organization or department, when I walk into a dysfunctional team, here is where I start looking.
WCB Claims Fail When Your Team Doesn’t Trust Each Other
Think about the last time you were working with someone and you had an absolute blast. What was the conversation like? What was the feeling you got working with them? How did you perform in that environment?
Then ask why is that?
At some point you created a trust between the two of you where you knew their role…they knew yours…and you could trust one another to do your jobs.
What’s interesting about this, is this person your working with could be a co-worker at the same level, or they could be your boss, or someone that reports to you.
The titles don’t matter in this case because you are both in the same boat. Yet, despite the ranking on the corporate organizational chart, you have a mutual trust in one another.
You know the task, you feel supported, and together you work to get the result.
As the health and safety (HSE) manager, it’s your responsibility to help your team trust each other to do the right thing when a WCB claim is reported.
You do this by making sure they know how to respond to the incident. You walk them through what the procedure is for helping the injured worker. You explain to them not only what information you need the to get, but why you want them to get it for you. What you’ll be doing with it. (Studies have shown an increase in participation and accuracy in reporting when the person knows how it will be used.)
You create a safe working environment that encourages questions and allows people to make mistakes. By giving them the room to make mistakes and knowing they will be held to account, your team is more willing to take risks that can solve more problems than it causes. It allows them to be creative to find alternative solutions.
When they don’t trust you or each other, they will only look out for themselves. They will always have one foot out the door just in case. They’ll undermine their co-workers and do the bare minimum. You’ll get delays in responses and reporting.
All of this culminates into a lack of trust and one of the three reasons your team is dysfunctional.
Toxic Work Environments Lead to Messy WCB Claims
An environment is created by the very things that live in that space. We refer to environments to describe the world we live in. An environment can be massive like the planet, or smaller like a community or family.
Companies like to put labels on their environments. They like to make it feel as though it’s part of their culture. When I like to argue an environment is a reflection of that which inhabits it.
I like using fun examples, because lets be honest. This WCB stuff can get boring.
I am a child of the 90’s so for some of you may remember the television show: “Married with Children.” Those of you that aren’t familiar with it, don’t worry, this will still make sense.
The show was about a family where the father worked as a shoe salesman and the mother stayed home. The kids were teenagers in high school and this was their life. Now what was entertaining for me is that each episode they’d spend most of their time arguing with each other. They would put each other down and make fun of one another. (Now that I think about it…I don’t know if the show would do too well these days.)
What was interesting to me was not what they said to each other, but how they responded when someone outside the family said something to one of them. For example, if a stranger said something about the dad how his wife and children would attack the stranger. They would almost protect their father. Then a few scenes later be putting him down again.
Where am I going with all of this?
From the outside looking in, the family environment looked terrible. The things they did and said to someone like me thought they hated one another. It wasn’t until something or someone tried to threaten the family that you saw that in fact, they were quite coordinated and stuck together as a family.
In business, many companies like to say “we’re family,” but when something attacks the organization like a WCB claim…you see siblings and “family” turn on each other. Placing blame or responsibility on some one else versus coming together.
Organizations are typically broken down into production and operations. Off in the distance like the little brother no one wants to tag along, but is forced to keep around is health and safety and risk management.
When a WCB claim hits the first thing they say is: “It’s health and safety’s problem.”
When in reality a WCB claim affects everybody in the organization. Health and safety may take the lead and coordinate the response, but they still need operations to help them gather information. In many cases, operations must be involved when gathering information or assisting with modified duties.
Modified duties happen when a worker can’t do their normal job, but they can do something. In that case you either modify their existing role or you find them a different job within the company until they can go back to their regular duties.
Health and safety need the help of operations because they may know the workers schedule, what tasks are available, and who could work with the worker and where they best fit.
There will also be times where operations must approve a cost associated with claims management. For example, the worker requires an assistive device to help them get back to work. This may need to be approved out of operations budget.
When a company has a dysfunctional work environment, it’s usually because there are individuals or departments that are only looking out for their own interests rather than that of the entire organization.
They choose not to participate in the process. They are unwilling to put in the effort that the situation demands. This lack of work ethic leads to expectations not met and further dysfunction.
This type of behavior is often characteristic of the third piece of a dysfunctional team.
Selfishness.
Selfish Teams Struggle With WCB Claims: Here’s Why.
My definition of selfishness is simply a person or group that is only interested in their needs being met. It’s their own interests above anyone or anything else. Selfishness is the rust that destroys a team.
You hear it all the time in sports. You can’t have a selfish team. Meaning people only caring about themselves.
What I realized was when we talk about organizations with selfish employees or departments, we like to talk about how horrible it is and how it MUST be fixed.
Rarely do I hear people asking: “How did this happen in the first place?”
I came across a video the other day that had NHL Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky talking about the time he spent on the Edmonton Oilers. This was a time where there had one several Stanley Cup Championships in a few short years. What he said that caught my interest was:
“We were an unselfish team pursuing a common goal.”
As I thought about that, I wondered what does it mean to be unselfish? How to you get a team to act in an unselfish way. How would that relate to managing WCB claims?
Here is the answer I came up with.
To have an unselfish team means the willingness to do the “nasty” stuff to be successful. That means the boring, mundane, everyday things that no one likes to do. It means stepping in when maybe it’s not your job. It means asking the hard questions when it doesn’t feel comfortable.
Examples when managing a WCB claim are:
- Conducting interviews with injured workers to really understand the story of what happened
- Driving workers to the doctor and sitting with them until they’re assessed
- Completing paperwork properly when you’re tired and just want to go home
While it’s easy to say this is how to be unselfish, what happens when people aren’t doing these things?
The reason people will often become selfish in a company is because:
- they don’t know what’s expected of them.
- They are not provided the tools and resources to do the job properly.
- They don’t feel supported
- Management tells them what to do and how to do it vs. letting them figure it out and trusting them to do the job
- There is no accountability
I want to focus on accountability for a moment. Often times, people will read these things and assume I’m talking about the employees and holding them accountable. While I do think there is a place for this and that needs to be addressed, I am more focused on the accountability of leadership and the organization.
I say this because when a company makes decisions and treats their staff in a specific way that is negative, but then doesn’t hold itself accountable, your employees will turn on you and become selfish.
The reason they’ll do this is because often they will say, if you can make a mistake and not be held accountable…who are you to tell me what I can and cannot do.
It’s like the teenager that was told by their parents not to do drugs or drink at parties. Only to find the pictures of mom and dad stoned on the regular or walking in drunk every weekend.
The point I’m making is a company needs to go first and be the example for it’s employees.
How to Build a Culture That Can Handle WCB Claims With Confidence
A company that wants to create teams that function properly need to provide the expectations of how to respond to when a WCB claim happens. They must give the tools and resources to take care of the worker and capture the story of what happened. You need people that are trained to respond to simplest of situations. Lastly, let your people do their jobs! That’s what you hired them to do. Just because you’re the HSE manager doesn’t mean you do their job for them.
The reason most HSE managers feel burnt out is because when an incident or WCB claim happens, instead of relying on their team, they do things themselves. They are the ones that get the story, document,and deal with the worker and WCB.
You should be able to trust your team to do their jobs.
Give them what they need. Create routines around reporting and how to investigate. Talk to operations and HR leadership about modified work and its benefits. Human Resource manager WCB courses can help bridge that gap.
Delegate tasks, especially document and information gathering. Funnel it to the people that need it and let them do their jobs.
Want Lower WCB Costs? Train Your Leaders to Own the Process
If you want to have fewer WCB claims, faster resolutions, and lower WCB premiums then it’s critical your leadership team act and participate as a part of the WCB solution. They shouldn’t be bystanders.
Train Your Team to Handle Claims and You Shouldn’t Have To
If your WCB claims feel like a mess, it’s not because your people don’t care, it’s because they haven’t been given the system, training, or leadership to respond with confidence. You don’t need more rules. You need more clarity.
That’s exactly why I created this guide:
How to Train Your Team to Respond to a WCB Incident
It’s a no-fluff resource that helps you build a claims response process your whole team understands, so when the pressure’s on, they actually know what to do.
And if you’re ready to build a team that can handle WCB claims without burning you out, I’ll help you build the program, train your supervisors, and be in your corner when you need support.
Go to the Contact Us page and let’s fix the system, not just the symptoms.
