For the past decades, we have studied workers’ compensation, and our research suggests that some workers who have made a compensation claim, find workers’ compensation systems and practices confusing and stressful. We also know this stress can affect people’s overall mental health and hinder rehabilitation and return to work.
We have also studied how workers’ compensation is delivered in other countries, and discovered that there are many different approaches.
Workers who have made a compensation claim, their families and friends, have a valuable perspective that can help to
improve workers’ compensation systems.
The most effective way to identify gaps and opportunities in current systems is with the active participation of workers, in their design.
Through this research study, we aim to do three things:
Listen & Learn
We will LISTEN to workers who have made a claim to understand their experiences in workers’ compensation systems in Australia. We will collect information through surveys, conversations, workshops, and from written, video, audio, and photo submissions.
Design & Develop
We will use the information we collect to design a new workers’ compensation system, using a computer modelling approach. This computer model will be developed along with workers, and their family or friends, to make sure it reflects the workers’ voice.
Compare & Improve
We will compare the worker-designed computer model with a computer model of the current system. This will help us get a better understanding of how things differ, and how outcomes for workers would change in a different system.
As a group of university-based researchers, we don’t have the ability at this stage to put this new worker-designed system into operation, but this study will provide crucial information to inform any future changes.
Our main aim is to amplify the workers’ voices. We will do this by publishing our findings on this website, in social and general media, and academic research papers. We will speak with people in the right places, and present our findings to governments, employers, insurers, and anyone else who will listen.