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Profile – David Anderson
Business in Vancouver
February 3-9, 2004
by Glenn Drexhage
Injury Time
As the new Workers' Compensation Board CEO, David Anderson is on a mission to save money by saving lives and reducing workplace mishaps
David Anderson is fervent about the bottom line — not in terms of dollars made, but in terms of B.C. workers' health protected.
"The thing that can really get you excited about a job like this is you have the opportunity to save lives," said the new president and CEO of the Workers' Compensation Board of B.C. "And that's a calling that's pretty easy to get passionate about."
The 54-year-old Anderson has carried this conviction since joining the provincial agency in 1995. "If we can prevent [workplace] injuries from happening, the financial consequences are wonderful — but the human consequences are so much more important."
The WCB dates to 1917, when a board was created based on a historic compromise: workers forfeited their right to sue employers for workplace accidents, and employers agreed to provide compensation if workers were injured.
Anderson, who took on the chief executive role in mid-December, faces some big tasks. The WCB has about $8.5 billion in assets and serves virtually all workers in the province — nearly two million — and about 175,00 employers, most of which are small businesses.
The compensation board has about 2,500 staffers. Approximately 500 jobs were cut a year ago through incentive packages and layoffs. In a nutshell, the WCB collects premiums from employers to pay current and all future injury costs.
The group discounts those costs to their present value. Money is collected to meet that figure and invested, via professional managers, in stocks, bonds and other instruments.
The WCB covered more than 12,000 medical and surgical procedures performed in public health care facilities last year, and about 1,900 surgical procedures in private clinics.
It's a tall task to manage the fiscal and services challenges facing such an organization, but Anderson brings a range of experience to the role.
He was born in northeast England and came to Burnaby as a child with his family. Anderson studied at the British Columbia Institute of Technology and Simon Fraser University, where he obtained an MBA.
After school, he joined Sears and worked for the retailer in a variety of roles for the next 14 years.
He shifted to the public sector, where he led the Liquor Distribution Branch from 1988 to 1990. He then moved back to private industry, serving as a vice-president for Keg Restaurants Ltd. for the next five years.
Anderson joined the WCB in 1995 as vice-president of human resources and corporate planning, and has been with the organization ever since.
During his tenure as vice-president of the board's rehabilitation and compensation services division, he reversed a five-year trend of rising claims cost by focusing on getting people rehabilitated and back to work earlier.
So which does he prefer - the private or public sector?
"The one that I'm in at the moment is the one that I always preferred," he said, laughing.
Seriously, he noted the talents gained in both arenas. "I don't find them as different as some people think they are," he said. "The skills that serve you well in one serve you well in the other."
And a former colleague feels Anderson will do a stellar job leading the WCB.
"He was very good at consensus building, in helping people see the other point of view in a discussion," said Jim Croteau, chief operating officer for Keg Restaurants in Richmond.
But he also highlighted the CEO's tough-minded aspects.
"He had a very no-nonsense attitude when it came to political game-playing."
Anderson believes in the work in the WCB does but doesn't shirk from critiquing the group.
One of his chief concerns is the need to communicate more effectively how the WCB serves its worker and employer clientele.
Another task is streamlining the group's structure. Currently the WCB delivers its services via separate "silos" for divisions such as claims, prevention and assessment.
"If you come to the wrong silo, we tend to refer you over to the correct one and leave you to your own devices to figure it out," Anderson said.
As a result, the disparate units will soon be consolidated into a single division, and Anderson predicts customers will start reaping the benefits by the second half of 2004.
There's also some encouraging news on premiums, as rates are remaining almost unchanged from last year at $2.059 per $100 of assessable payroll. That's 10 percent lower than the 1996 rate — which hit a peak rate of $2.29 — and among the lowest in Canada.
The injury rate, or the number of accepted short-term disability claims per 100 full-time workers, has also dropped to 2.9. That's a considerable improvement compared to 1994, when that figure stood at 5.2.
In the group's latest annual report, it listed an unfunded liability of about $407 million for the year ended December 31, 2002, compared to the previous year's unappropriated balance of $134 million. Anderson attributes that decline to sagging stock markets.
Including reserves, the WCB was fully funded by the end of 2003.
Again, while the numbers are important, Anderson realizes that his leadership requires a vision that takes more into account than just fiscal health. Indeed, he's anxious to change society's opinions about workplace hazards, a prescient view given that on average, three workers died in B.C. every week last year.
"We've got to move [from] a time when accepting that people die
naturally in their jobs is acceptable," Anderson said. "It's
not."