Enter your workers, earnings and industry rate to see your premium and what a Certificate of Recognition pays back: in Alberta, the full Partnerships in Injury Reduction refund with its caps; elsewhere, your board's own COR incentive.
How Alberta's PIR refund works
- 10% of your industry-rated premium in the first year you earn a COR.
- 5% every year you keep it, with maintenance audits in the two years after certification and recertification every three years.
- Up to 20% if your claim costs improve on last year (1% back for every 1% better), or stay well below your industry's average for two periods in a row.
None of the PIR measures pays without a COR, and the refund stops if the COR lapses. Keeping the program alive between audits is what keeps the money coming.
For how COR works and what an audit looks at, read WCB COR rebates in Alberta and What is a COR?, and check how ready your program is with the COR readiness check. Our COR and SECOR preparedness service takes you through it.
Sources: WCB-Alberta PIR program guide (February 2023), Policy 07-02 Part II Application 3, 2026 Pricing Guide and 2026 maximum insurable earnings ($110,900); WorkSafeBC COR incentives (Assessment Manual AP5-247-4); WCB Manitoba Prevention Rebate Program (Policy 52.40, Board Order 36/25); WorkplaceNL PRIME (PR-01); Yukon WSCB CHOICES; WCB Nova Scotia (via the Association of Workers' Compensation Boards of Canada, March 2024); WSIB Health and Safety Excellence and Safe Employers programs. An estimate: your board calculates the refund from your reported payroll and its own records.
Frequently asked questions
- How much is the COR rebate in Alberta?
- Through WCB-Alberta’s Partnerships in Injury Reduction (PIR) program, an employer earning a COR for the first time gets back 10% of its industry-rated premium that year, then 5% each year it keeps the COR. Better claim costs can raise the refund to as much as 20%: WCB pays whichever measure is highest, and only to COR holders.
- How is the PIR refund calculated?
- Refund = (assessable earnings ÷ 100) × your industry rate × the PIR percentage. It is worked out on the industry-rated premium, the premium before experience rating. A company with $1.75 million of assessable earnings at an industry rate of $2.00 has a $35,000 industry premium, so a first-year COR is worth $3,500 and each later year $1,750.
- Is there a cap on PIR refunds?
- Yes. The refund is at most 20%, your experience rating discount and PIR together can’t exceed 60%, and after every discount you still pay at least 40% of the industry premium, or $200, whichever is greater.
- Do other provinces pay a COR rebate?
- Some do. WorkSafeBC credits 10% of the base premium for the units a COR covers (at least $1,000 or 75% of premium, whichever is less). Manitoba pays SAFE Work Certified employers 15% of premium or $3,000, whichever is greater, capped at 50%. Yukon pays 10% up to $25,000, Newfoundland and Labrador’s PRIME 5%, and Nova Scotia has a rebate for construction and trucking. Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, PEI and the territories reward a safer record through experience rating instead.
