Well Happy February to all Excellence members! Today we wanted to share some learnings as firms submit their evidence for WSIB validation. To those of you who were in the Safety Group program it is much like an onsite validation, and for those who are new to incentive programs, you need to prove that you have completed the 5 steps of implementation and that you met all of the requirements of the topic. Dunk & Associates does not read through every policy or piece of evidence and measure it against the topic criteria, we do a review to determine if we believe it demonstrates that the program is implemented and effective – “living and breathing” in your workplace. For the fees we charge we cannot possibly read, and dissect every policy, document and piece of evidence. There is a reliance on you, the members to understand the requirements and meet them. If you require assistance, we are here to help.
This program is on a learning curve for all of us and what we have realized is that a photo of a safety board, a completed workplace inspection and a survey report showing the feedback from your workers on a topic, is not enough. For those of you with multiple account and firm numbers you must demonstrate that the topic was implemented at that location and how the topic effected those employees. To assist all of you we are creating submission templates for each topic for the 2021 program year. The program is off to a slow start in 2021 as we are waiting on WSIB to clarify parts of the program. Hang in there, between COVID, a new Excellence program and virtual meeting and sessions, we are hitting a few bumps. So far, we have no firm who has failed to earn a rebate on a submission (well not yet anyways), but there is some back and forth with validators to achieve a topic pass.
Know you are not in this alone and we, at Dunk & Associates, are here to advocate that your hard work and evidence, earned a rebate. We respect the program requirements but need to close the gap between what we think the validators want and what we submit as evidence. Be well, stay safe!