How coaching became a leadership strategy at WorkSafeNB
Leadership coaching isn't just about helping individual leaders grow. At its best, it can strengthen an entire organization.
That's the story behind WorkSafeNB's remarkable leadership journey. What began with one-to-one executive coaching evolved into high-performance team coaching, coaching skills training for leaders, and a deliberate effort to embed coaching into the organization's culture.
Over nearly a decade of partnership with Vision Coaching, WorkSafeNB embedded coaching into the way its leaders lead, collaborate and develop others. The result is an organization recognized not only for leadership excellence, but as a 2026 global finalist in the International Coaching Federation's Coaching Impact Awards.
In this case study, you'll discover how coaching helped leaders build greater trust, strengthen accountability, create healthier dialogue and reinforce a people-first culture during a period of extraordinary organizational success.
Read the full Case Study below.
Quick summary
WorkSafeNB’s journey from one-to-one executive coaching to enterprise-wide cultural impact
Quick summary
-
Dramatic organizational turnaround – achieving historic safety performance, including the lowest injury frequency rate in Canada.
-
Returned more than $233 million to employers across 2024-2025 in unprecedented performance refunds.
-
Improved employee engagement to 14 points above benchmark, with strong satisfaction among both injured workers and employers.
-
Recognized as one of Atlantic Canada’s Top Employers – reflecting measurable gains in culture and leadership alignment.
-
Vision Coaching supported this evolution through One-to-One Executive Coaching, High-Performance Team Coaching, and Using the Coach Approach™, embedding coaching capability within the executive team and select senior leaders.
Executive summary
WorkSafeNB set out to strengthen how leadership showed up across the organization, recognizing that sustained performance in a complex public mandate depends on trust and alignment.
Over several years, the organization delivered a dramatic turnaround – achieving historically low injury rates, record financial strength, employer rate reductions, and its first-ever performance refunds, while improving employee engagement and client experience.
Through Vision Coaching’s One-to-One Coaching, High-Performance Team Coaching, and Using the Coach Approach™, leaders created deliberate space to reflect, challenge one another, and lead more effectively – individually and as a team.
What follows is an exploration of how that leadership journey unfolded, and the role coaching played over time.
The leadership challenge
WorkSafeNB operates at the centre of one of New Brunswick’s most complex public systems – protecting workers, supporting families after serious injury or death, and maintaining a financially sustainable compensation model for employers.
It administers the workers’ compensation system for employers and workers across New Brunswick, serving more than 15,000 registered employers across diverse industries and hundreds of thousands of workers, with assessment rates set based on payroll and risk groupings.
For President and CEO Tim Petersen, leadership effectiveness was never going to be driven by technical expertise alone. Having spent more than three decades at WorkSafeNB before becoming CEO, he understood both the complexity of the organization’s mandate and the leadership demands that came with it.
“I didn’t want us to be just one of the strong executive leadership teams,” Petersen says. “I wanted us to be the strongest.”
His own experience with coaching predated his appointment as CEO in 2022. Introduced to executive coaching two years prior, he initially approached it with some skepticism. That shifted quickly as the organization navigated the pressures and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Coaching became a practical space to process decisions, recalibrate under stress, and gain clarity in the midst of constant demands.
“Initially for me, executive coaching was more like executive counselling,” Petersen says. “But sometimes you need that outlet before you can get to the deeper work.”
When Petersen assumed the chief executive role, he made a deliberate choice to extend coaching across the executive leadership team – not as a corrective measure, but as an investment in leadership discipline and collective performance.
Reframing leadership development
One-to-One Coaching was introduced to senior leaders as a space for reflection, clarity, and growth.
Vice-President of People and Culture Laragh Dooley says regular sessions with her Vision coach help her create space to step back from the day-to-day, work through complex issues, and make clearer decisions.
“Those 60 minutes every two weeks saved me many hours – sometimes a full day,” she says. “It gave me the clarity to move forward instead of carrying issues around or revisiting them again and again.”
In parallel, WorkSafeNB invested in Using the Coach Approach™, a coaching skills program designed to help managers and leaders lead differently – by asking better questions, guiding rather than directing, and building capability within their teams.
WorkSafeNB was able to expand coaching capability across its leadership group through formal training and by embedding coaching as a core leadership competency. Using the Coach Approach™ was introduced with the executive team and a small group of leaders.
The intent was to embed coaching behaviours into everyday leadership, not limit them to formal coaching conversations.
That focus aligns with WorkSafeNB’s broader people-first strategy, which places accountability, collaboration, and trust at the centre of how the organization serves both employees and the public.
From individual growth to collective leadership
As confidence in coaching grew, the approach expanded beyond individuals to the executive leadership team as a whole. Quarterly High-Performance Team Coaching sessions became a forum for honest dialogue, shared accountability, and alignment.
Dooley points to trust as the critical enabler. Team coaching accelerated leaders’ ability to challenge assumptions, debate decisions, and commit collectively once decisions were made.
“Trust is the foundation of any high-performing team,” she says. “Team coaching helped us get there faster.”
For Lisa Walker, Chief Information Officer, the shift was tangible. Coaching changed how the executive team engaged with one another, particularly in moments of disagreement.
“It always comes back to trust,” she says. “Coaching allowed us to have open, honest, and vulnerable conversations as an executive team. We can challenge each other, debate big decisions, and disagree – but nobody leaves the room upset or feeling slighted. We leave aligned.”
Importantly, this work did not remain confined to the executive level. Importantly, this work did not remain confined to the executive level. Coaching became embedded more broadly across leadership through training and development, shaping how leaders support and develop their teams.
“Our goal is to drive accountability down within the organization,” Dooley says. “That means fewer directives from the top and more people thinking, contributing, and owning solutions.”
Culture before metrics – but the metrics followed
WorkSafeNB’s leadership team is careful not to attribute organizational results to any single initiative. Coaching was one contributor among many, alongside legislative reform, operational improvements, and sustained effort by employees across the organization.
The outcomes are astonishing.
WorkSafeNB has achieved the lowest injury frequency rate in New Brunswick’s history and the lowest injury rate in Canada. Employer assessment rates declined to $1.10 per $100 of payroll – the lowest in the province’s history and the second lowest in the country.
In 2024, WorkSafeNB issued its first-ever performance refund, returning $180.6 million to eligible employers, followed by more than $53 million in additional refunds announced for 2025. At the same time, benefits for injured workers increased, and the funding ratio approached 153 per cent.
That leadership shift showed up internally as well. In 2025, WorkSafeNB’s employee engagement survey revealed that 76 per cent of employees classified as engaged – meaning they demonstrated high levels of commitment, confidence in leadership, and connection to the organization’s purpose – placing WorkSafeNB 14 points above the industry benchmark. The strongest drivers were culture, inclusion, and coworker relationships.
Leadership that shows up when it matters most
For many roles within WorkSafeNB, leadership presence is tested in the most difficult circumstances. Managers and investigators routinely work with families experiencing the aftermath of serious injury or workplace death.
Michel Cyr, Manager of Investigations, says leadership culture matters most in those moments.
“Here, we genuinely feel that senior management cares,” he says. “That sets the standard for how we show up for families on the worst days of their lives.”
That consistency is reflected in client experience as well. In 2024, satisfaction among injured workers increased to 74 per cent, while employer satisfaction held at 74 per cent – results the organization links to staff expertise, character, communication, and accessibility.
A long-term investment in leadership
WorkSafeNB does not view coaching as a program or a phase. Over time, it has become part of how leaders are supported, challenged, and developed.
The value of coaching, Dooley says, lies in its cumulative effect. Regular reflection and challenge strengthen decision-making, reduce unproductive friction, and help leaders stay focused on what matters most. Over time, that discipline shapes not only how leaders perform, but how the organization functions as a whole.
That expectation begins at the top. Petersen, the President and CEO, views his own coaching as a necessary discipline of the role.
Coaching, he says, provides space to test assumptions, reflect on decisions, and remain intentional about how he leads – reinforcing the same behaviours and accountability he expects of the leadership team.
“We don’t see this as a finish line,” Petersen says. “Leadership is something you have to work at, continually. Coaching helps us be honest about that – and committed to getting better.”