Putting people at the centre of the workers insurance system for successful return to work

Most people who were injured are keen to return to work in a reasonable timeframe, but some have more complex needs and require a different model of care. Dr Caroline Howe says it’s crucial that the workers compensation system actively involves the injured worker and operates from a real place of care.

A workers insurance system is complex. Its purpose is to care for and protect workers. However, as those of us who have worked in the system know, the system is not as efficient as it could be. Sometimes the system works and sometimes it breaks. When this happens, the goal of caring gets lost, the cost to the scheme grows and we start letting people down. The system is there to help people get back to work quickly but the opposite in happening.

I believe there is a clear opportunity to better meet the expectations of workers by addressing systemic issues and connecting the dots to achieve improved outcomes for people, and also help reduce the cost of the scheme for employers.

We know that on average 80% of claimants will return to work in a reasonable timeframe, but there are those who will have more complex needs and therefore require a more contemporary, people-centered model of care that focuses on driving a sustainable recovery for workers. The trick is in knowing who needs what care and when!

At point of injury, decisions and control can transition from the worker to the system. If you were to draw a map of the journey of a claim – once the injury is registered, in some schemes, there may not be a need to involve a worker in their own return to work planning any longer. Scary, when you think about it, as the whole essence of the workers insurance scheme it to include the worker.

That’s why we need to change how we work, how we think and more importantly how we tackle the systemic problems. The customer experience needs to be enhanced by empowering the customer and putting them at the center of their recovery.

What we also know from research is that to drive real change in the workers compensation system we need to redesign that change by involving the people that matter most in the process: the customer. In 2014, SafeWork Australia published a paper showing that the perception of care a worker felt from their manager was key to their ability to go back to work quickly. The significance of this finding is stark. It supports the notion that meaningful human connection is critical for a person’s successful return to work, as opposed to focusing on the ‘system’ that supports return to work.

It is this people-centered philosophy which NSW’s recently established icare (Insurance & Care NSW) has adopted to provide insurance and care services at every layer of the NSW workers compensation ecosystem – from stakeholder interaction in the claims process; provision of premium incentives to increase employer safety and productivity; to driving new partnership opportunities to achieve better care outcomes for injured workers.

To drive meaningful change, we know that if we link communities of practice within the community, using human-centered design thinking and a framework for collective benefit, we can create impactful change for injured workers in the system as well as employers. Our industry’s success will not come from the bureaucracy, but will be driven from the people and their own innovations within their own communities.

Systemic change in workers compensation must be driven from a place of care in order for real change to be seen. If you can change the way one employer thinks about wellbeing for workers and can get one employer to understand that wellbeing across their workforce will create higher staff engagement, less risk to workers, reduce possible claims and save employers money, I believe we will see the focus of the scheme transform and mature into one which makes a genuine difference to more workers’ lives.