Yvette Smith, Assessment Manager
Department of Industrial Accidents
Yvette Smith has been a manager with the Department of Industrial Accidents (DIA) in the Assessment Unit for over four years. When she started, the Assessment Unit existed in name only. More than 90% of the DIA’s budget is funded through assessments on Workers’ Compensation insurance policies collected from insurers. Until four years ago, there had been little effort to ensure that insurers were paying what they owed, and that those funds were being collected on a timely and accurate basis. Accountability was nonexistent. Yvette changed that culture. With no staff, she immediately created a new system in the collection of assessments, ensuring that every insurer would pay immediately and accurately. She worked with auditing firms to go through past records and collect long-overdue assessments from years- and in some case decades- past. Yvette has singlehandedly changed the culture around how insurers calculate and pay assessments, saving the DIA millions of dollars, ensuring that the DIA’s budget is fully funded each year, and putting money back in the hands of employers.
This information provided by the Human Resources Division