Customer Highlight: Achieving a Certificate of Recognition with Chinook’s Edge

Earning a Certificate of Recognition (COR) for workplace safety was a major goal for Chinook’s Edge School Division 73 in Alberta, Canada. Meeting the safety standards required for certification would not only significantly reduce injury rates; it would also earn the division premium rebates through the Workers Compensation Board’s (WCB) Partnerships in Injury Reduction (PIR) program.

As the sole Safety Officer for the rural division’s 38 campuses, Linden Lonsberry is tasked with conducting investigations, training or re-training workers, managing safety tasks, making safety recommendations and addressing hazard and near-miss reports. Because of his already full workload, he needed help developing a health and safety program that met the rigorous standards put forth by the WCB.

To accomplish this, Lonsberry used the EmployeeSafe Suite to schedule, manage and sustain his safety program, which includes staff training, incident management, safety tasks (inspections, drills and other tasks) and more. With the help of EmployeeSafe Suite, Lonsberry knew the required training, safety tasks, and responses to accident and near-miss reports had been completed and he was able to easily provide the division’s inspection documents for the auditors’ review.

In order to be eligible for a COR audit, a health and safety program has to consist of the following eight elements:

·         Management, leadership and organizational commitment

·         Hazard identification and assessment

·         Hazard control

·         Ongoing inspections

·         Emergency response

·         Qualification, orientation and training

·         Accident and incident investigation

·         Program administration

“PublicSchoolWORKS helped us meet the COR requirements, with four out of the eight elements being completely automated—making them hands-off for administration,” said Lonsberry.

Receiving the COR has earned the division a 20 percent reduction in WCB premiums – a savings of approximately $43,000 per year. Using the EmployeeSafe Suite, Chinook’s Edge also saw fewer injuries and a reduction in injury-related costs. The division’s WCB claims totaled nearly $250,000 in 2003; they are now approximately $20,000, putting Chinook’s Edge 51.69 percent below the industry average for WCB claims.

To learn more about how Chinooks Edge uses PublicSchoolWORKS, click here.