Reforming a complex system: the case of NSW workers’ compensation and return to work

Abstract

Numerous government inquiries have established that a central objective for a successful workers’ compensation scheme is timely and durable return to work for injured workers, through effective occupational rehabilitation. Yet workers’ compensation schemes are complex systems involving multiple parties, which interact dynamically and non-linearly to influence later events in unpredictable ways. Complex systems theory predicts that the relationship patterns within a system, like workers’ compensation, are just as likely to tend toward failure as they are toward success. This paper demonstrates that in spite of an abundance of government recommendations and scholarly evidence prioritising timely return to work for injured workers, the New South Wales Workers’ Compensation Scheme systematically fails to support this objective. Instead, endemic hostility toward injured workers obstructs legislative intent to support efforts to rehabilitate and return to work.

Keywords:

• workers’ compensation
• complex systems theory
• return to work
• injured workers
• occupational rehabilitation
• workplace health and safety

Notes

1. Seriously injured workers, those with greater than 30% whole of person permanent impairment, are exempted from having weekly entitlements diminished through WCDs, but the 30% threshold means this only applies to a handful of workers (estimated at 994 workers since 1987). This figure excludes seriously injured workers who have been able to make a common law claim and received a lump sum settlement.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sasha Holley

Sasha Holley is a senior research assistant in the Centre for Workforce Futures at Macquarie University. She has experience as a social policy researcher in development economics, having worked for the World Bank and various bilateral aid organisations and NGOs.

Louise Thornthwaite

Louise Thornthwaite is an associate professor in the Department of Marketing and Management at Macquarie University. She has published extensively on industrial relations, public sector employment relations, employer association and employers’ strategy and behaviour, discrimination law, work–family balance policies and employment law.

Sharron O’Neill

Sharron O’Neill is Senior Research Fellow in the International Governance and Performance Research Centre at Macquarie University. Her current research focuses on corporate governance and accountability, particularly corporate social and non-financial performance. Her niche area of expertise is work health and safety (WHS) risk and performance measurement, both financial and non-financial. She has also undertaken and published research in the areas of environmental risk management, financial accounting, management accounting and professions.

Ray Markey

Ray Markey is Director of the Centre for Workforce Futures and Professor of Employment Relations in the Department of Marketing and Management at Macquarie University. He has written extensively on labour parties, trade unions and other forms of employee voice, peak union bodies, workplace industrial relations, and racism and the labour market. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles or book chapters, as well as 14 books authored or edited by himself or with colleagues.