We hope all of you have been keeping safe and well during this third wave, and with May now upon us, we are one step closer to the summer weather! With most of you having wrapped up your 2020 program year and are now looking at which topics you would like to select for 2021, we wanted to take some time to provide tips and tricks to writing effective Workplans.
You can find the Dunk Workplan template in the “Program Resources” section of the Dunk Excellence Portal. This Workplan is designed to give you a chance to describe your line of business, provide us with your rationale for selecting your topics and develop your implementation plan. Firms who had detailed, well thought out implementation plans experienced much higher rates of success in implementing their topics in the 2020 program year than those who did not. The more time and effort you spend developing your Workplan – the easier it will be to implement your topics and prepare your submissions for validation.
Within each topic sheet, the first question we ask is if the topic is new to your organization. Remember, a topic will be considered new if no written policy/procedure/standard for it exists and it has never been implemented in your workplace before. If the topic is not new to your workplace, we ask that you complete the Topic Approval Form. Within this form, we ask that you identify why there is a significant gap in the effectiveness of the topic or if there was a significant change in your workplace. When answering these questions, keep it short and keep it simple. As a reminder, the threshold for a “significant gap” and “significant change” is fairly high. As a result, we ask that you explain why the program has failed, is not being executed or is broken. We will be looking for this type of language when approving your topics. Furthermore, we will be looking for qualitative or quantitative evidence that proves how the program has failed or is not working. Simply identifying weaknesses or missing components in your initiatives would be considered “continuous improvement” and cannot be approved.
When developing your implementation plan, we ask that you take your time to develop a well thought out plan that addresses all the topic’s requirements found in the WSIB Program Member Guidelines (available in the Program Resources tab of the Dunk Excellence Portal). We recommend that you get specific when filling out this section. For example, which specific methods of communication will your organization use, and which workplace parties will receive training on what aspects of the topic? What specific pieces of evidence will be produced by these actions? Who will be assigned to complete each step and what is your timeline for completion? The more work that is put into your Workplan now translates to less work during implementation and preparing your submission for validation.
As always, you have a dedicated support team who is available at excellence@systems24-7 or 1-866-754-8839 who would be happy to work with you in the development of your workplan. Stay tuned via our newsletter and Dunk Excellence Portal for more information on the tools, webinars, and resources we have available to make the implementation of your topics as smooth as possible.