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.
