Claims reluctance

An Australian study has found that concern for job security may be a significant deterrent to injured health and community services workers applying for accident compensation.

 Safe Work Australia has released a series of reports based on work-related injuries from 2005-06, using worker’s compensation claims data in Australia to measure OHS performance.

A report into the health and community services industry showed those workers experienced 77 injuries per 1000 workers, a slightly higher rate than for all Australian workers.

Nearly eight in ten workers in that industry are female, and about four in ten work part-time. The part-time workers experienced 64 injuries per million hours worked, which was much higher than the rate for full-time workers (43 injuries per million hours worked).

The study also found that concern for job security could be putting the workers off applying for workers’ compensation.

Of the 80,000 workers in the health and community services industry 78,000 were employees and eligible for compensation. However only 35 percent of injured workers applied, a slightly lower percentage that for all Australian employees (38 percent).

The main reason given for not applying for compensation was that the employee felt the injury was only minor, or that claiming was not necessary. That reason was cited by almost half of the injured employees who did not apply.

But about 15 percent did not claim due to concerns about the negative impact on their current or future employment, a higher rate than in the Australian workforce as a whole.

The report suggested that health and community services employees generally had less confidence in their job security, or were less aware of their right to compensation without repercussions.

Another study looked into factors affecting applications for workers’ compensation across the board. It found female employees were less likely to apply for compensation for their work-related injury than male employees. Of injuries that involved some time lost from work, 44 percent of female employees did not apply for compensation compared to 36 percent of males.

The main reasons for not applying were because they considered the injury too minor. But for about one fifth of male employees it was because they did not know they were eligible, and for a similar proportion of females it was due to concern about their current of future employment.

Young female employees were least likely to claim worker’s compensation, while males aged 45-54 years were most likely to make a claim.

The type of injury had little impact on whether an injured employee applied for compensation except in cases that involved stress or other mental conditions. While around half of all injuries that involved some time lost from work were claimed, injuries that involved stress were claimed in 36 percent of cases.

This story appeared in Safeguard Update newsletter of 2 November.

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