WSIB has an entire student program to support young people. So where exactly are they supposed to build a career if we are being replaced with AI?

Thought about this over the weekend, as I was talking to my nephew who was involved in the summer program a few years back.

As a past employee (recently retired) I find the current direction of the organization extremely difficult to understand with the massaging WSIB puts out about supporting students and developing the next generation of workers.

WSIB has a student program they love to flaunt about that is designed to give young people opportunities to gain experience and build careers.

But at the same time, WSIB is eliminating hundreds of jobs and moving toward increased use of AI and automation.

So I have a question….. Where the F are these students supposed to go if there are no entry level jobs left?

Many of the people currently sitting in management and director-level positions didn't walk into WSIB as directors. They started somewhere. They came in through entry-level positions, administrative roles, customer service, student placements and other jobs that gave them an opportunity to learn the organization and work their way up.

You can’t eliminate the bottom of the ladder and then boast that you're committed to developing the people who are supposed to climb it.

And the part I really don't understand. If AI is replacing the work being done by employees, what's the end game?

Are we going to have an organization made up of a handful of managers who manage AI stats? Or maybe the managers will be AI? Or remove managers altogether and straight to directors?

Eventually you have to ask where the people who become tomorrow's managers and directors are supposed to come from.

And there is an even bigger irony here.
WSIB exists to support injured workers. We are constantly reminded about the importance of compassion, empathy and understanding when dealing with people who are often going through one of the most difficult periods of their lives. Jeff stood up in front of all the Hamilton staff and told everyone in the audience if we didn’t have empathy, we shouldn’t work for WSIB. The pot continues to call the kettle black.

But WSIB is moving toward a model where more and more of those interactions are to be automated.

Imagine being an injured worker who has lost their ability to work, is worried about paying their mortgage or feeding their family, doesn't understand the system and just wants to talk to someone who actually understands what they're going through and the only “person” to speak to is a bot. How exactly does that align with compassion?

Technology can absolutely have a place in improving services. Nobody is arguing that we should stop modernizing. But they can’t even implement a decent software system for what the staff do now. The online services are an absolute disaster. They are a joke. But there is a massive difference between using technology to support people and using technology to replace people.

They are not just eliminating jobs, but are eliminating entry points into a career.. They are eliminating opportunities for young people to get their first experience with a public organization, learn the business, gain knowledge and eventually become the people sitting in leadership roles 10 or 20 years later.

And many of the people making these decisions today benefited from exactly those opportunities and that is the irony. The ladder that helped build the current workforce is being pulled up behind them while WSIB continues to tell young people that there is a future here for them.

So what, here is a student program, but no entry level jobs available for humans? Sorry for your luck?
Why are we pretending there is a career ladder at all?

At what point does “modernization” stop being about improving the organization and start becoming about eliminating the very people who make the organization function. If you eliminate the jobs people use to get into WSIB, how exactly do you expect to develop the people who will lead WSIB in the future?

I’m absolutely exhausted of the BS lies these leaders keep telling the staff about everyone’s future because it doesn’t look like there is much of one.

Jeff Lang and the board of the directors legacy will be that they stripped WSIB down to its bare bones, dismantled many employees lives, gutted the people and services it was built to provide, and left the economy worse off in the process.