Industry News
News in Workers' Compensation: Victoria
Major Victorian WorkCover reforms are here. Learn how rising premiums and new psychosocial hazard rules affect your injury prevention strategy.
With a growing gap of $1.1 billion losses in premiums, massive reform is on the horizon for a "fundamentally broken" Victorian Worker's Compensation scheme. If you missed it, the Victorian Government confirmed that effective 1 July 2023:
- Average rate for WorkCover premiums will rise from 1.27% to 1.8%
- Premium 'cap' will increase from 30% to 75%
- Mental health claims for stress and burnout will be limited to provisional payments of 13 weeks for medical treatment. As a result, having a companywide strategy for risk management and injury prevention is more important than ever. Coupled with recent legislation change surrounding psychosocial hazards, there has never been a better time to develop a targeted plan to reduce escalating compensation costs.
These changes may significantly impact on your bottom line and have you considering what you can do to help your workers and mitigate growing workers' compensation costs.
To understand this further, there are three main driving factors in your WorkCover premium:
- Rateable remuneration
- Industry classification which determines how much risk is expected at your workplace (i.e., mining vs retail)
- Claims costs, both actual costs plus the statistical case estimate. Of these factors, claims costs are both preventable through early intervention, and manageable through best practice injury management.
By educating and empowering workers to take responsibility for their wellbeing, EMP Onsite helps employers to develop a positive safety culture and create meaningful organisational and behavioural change. In fact, we typically deliver a 30% reduction in claims and premium costs.