November 15, 2017 – With the launch of Compass—a new online health & safety tool by Ontario’s Workplace Safety & Insurance Board—Ontarians can, for the first time, find and compare health & safety statistics for businesses across the province.

Using Compass, anyone can see the number and types of injuries in any workplace in Ontario. They will also get a sense of the severity of those injuries by looking at how many workers were off work past the day of an accident, and how many workers are still receiving benefits a year afterward. Compass also allows users to compare health & safety statistics for up to five different businesses simultaneously.

Compass and workplace health & safety
Compass can help businesses make decisions about health and safety and return-to-work strategies. The first phase of Compass will let you see how your workplace compares to other businesses in your sector or rate group. You will get a sense of where you sit on lost-time injury rates, leading part of body injured statistics, and lost-time claims receiving wage loss benefits at one year. You will also be able to see injury claims and benefit payments by registration year.

The tool shows data at an employer level. Any business that had coverage with us from 2012 to 2016 will be included in Compass. During this time, the majority of businesses had no injury or illness claims. If this is the case for your business, you will still appear on Compass, but without any statistics.

You can use the data on Compass as information to take steps toward a safer workplace. I encourage all businesses to use the tool to help make decisions about health & safety, prevention and return-to-work strategies. Future phases of Compass will give you even more information to help you make decisions regarding health & safety in your workplace.

Compass can also help identify what is driving sector statistics at the business level. In 2016, the electrical industry accounted for 1% of all allowed lost-time claims—or 369 claims—with little change over the past few years. A lost-time claim is created when an employee suffers a work-related illness or injury, resulting in them being off work past the day of the accident, loss of wages, or a permanent disability of impairment. In the electrical sector, the leading part of body injured is the lower extremities (25%) followed by the back (20%).

Ontario’s Open Data Directive
Our efforts are part of the Province of Ontario’s Open Data Directive: a larger government initiative that aims to make government more open and transparent to the public. One way to do that is to maximize access to government data (unless it is exempt for legal, privacy, security, confidentiality or commercial sensitivity reasons).

Compass is one way we are making our workplace data open and accessible; doing so provides more transparency, lets citizens and community-based organizations use our data, and supports innovation.

We take the privacy of businesses and injured employees very seriously. We do not release personal information and we follow the principles laid out in the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. We will protect confidentiality in the disclosure of our data while supporting the Open Data Directive’s open by default approach.

Find out more
You should give Compass a try. Find your own business and see how you compare. Visit www.wsib.on.ca/compass and watch the video above.

Christina Hoy is vice-president, Corporate Business Information & Analytics, with Ontario’s Workplace Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB). Visit www.wsib.on.ca.