Influencing your Work Health and Safety

If you are one of those employers who regularly say: “Oh no not another Workers Compensation Claim”, and perpetually have one on the go, then it may be time to step back and look at the bigger picture of your work health and safety.

Let’s just go through a few facts and statistics that have been sourced from the “Compendium of Workers’ Compensation Statistics Australia 2007 – 08” published in January 2010 by Safe Work Australia. *

In 2007 – 2008 there were a total of 131, 110 serious workers compensation claims accepted Australia-wide. A serious workers compensation claim is defined as a claim due to death, permanent incapacity or temporary incapacity for a minimum of 1 week

The above figure equates to 13.5 in 1000 employees and 8 claims per 1 million hours worked

47.9 percent of claims were for sprains, strains of joints and adjacent muscles

22.7 percent were back injuries

12.9 percent were hand injuries

17.8 percent were caused by lifting

15.1 percent were caused by handling

13 percent were caused by trips and falls on level surfaces

As you can see, the types of injuries that occur more frequently can be considered quite “common”, regardless of the work health and safety situation.

Yes, you may have an induction process, you may have all the required safety signage in place and yes you think you have hired people that have common sense. However people still keep injuring themselves and you’re left with a workers compensation claim, which affects your premium, leaves you a person short, and you’re wondering why this keeps happening.

Typically there are a few major factors influencing your work health and safety.

Do you have a culture of safety at your company?  This means more than just having a safety system in place. It means that from the top down there is a genuine desire to maintain a safe work environment, and is built with the buy-in of all employees.

Let’s look at an example. John is a supervisor in the grocery department of a supermarket and is running Jody through her induction on the first day. He is showing her the various processes of her job, and when it comes to sign-off on an induction form, there are specific points covering manual handling and John asks “you know how to lift something don’t you?”, Jody nods and this point gets signed off. A clear message is provided to the new employee that correct manual handling is not important, even though she is likely to be moving boxes and individual items for 90 percent of her new job.

Fast forward 6 months into Jody’s new job. She notices that she has to take on more work because some of her work colleagues have made workers compensation claims, and are getting paid for not being at work because they have a sore back from lifting boxes all of the time. Jody’s load increases, she has not been shown the correct lifting technique, and funnily enough it’s only a matter of time before she makes her own application for workers compensation, and the cycle continues.

Do you devote the necessary time to managing worker’s compensation claims and your work health and safety? The supermarket store supervisor’s approach is along the lines of “out of sight, out of mind.” There are other employees to take on Jody’s hours, and there’s just not enough time to manage the claims and focus on the return to work of injured employees. In the meantime, Jody starts to realise she’s on easy street. She keeps telling the Doctor that she cannot return to work, he keeps providing her medical certificates stating she is unfit for full duties and Jody continues to get paid wages.

Whilst this is a very simplistic example, the key points are that although there are work health and safety systems in place, they are not applied correctly and are not inherent in the culture of the company. Combine this with poor direction and management from two levels of management and no regard to the swift return to work of the injured employee, the cycle of injury and workers compensation continues.

Through this example the following points are clear:

-          Work health and safety is more than a policy and sign-off sheets, it needs to be imbedded in the culture and driven from senior management;

-          Existing workplace safety systems need to be reviewed on an ongoing basis, and are not static. Ensure that employees are consulted as part of the process;

-          Workers compensation claims need to be managed by a representative of the company to insure minimum impact on the business and effective return to work of the injured employee. It’s not enough to rely upon the insurer and doctors.