Talking Point: The Workers’ Voice project: Re-imagining workers’ compensation from a lived experience perspective

This project aims to re-imagine the design and operation of workers’ compensation in Australia, from a lived experience perspective. The study is motivated by decades of research showing that engagement with workers’ compensation systems has adverse mental health consequences for many injured workers. 

The study has developed extensive insights into injured persons experiences of workers’ compensation, participant informed solutions for policy and practice reform, and developed computational models of workers compensation systems in which to test policy and practice reform.

Professor Collie will review the evidence supporting the assertion that Australian workers’ compensation systems cause harm to injured workers. Professor Collie will describe solutions for policy and practice reform proposals designed by injured workers to improve system outcomes and minimise harm. 

Professor Alex Collie is Director of the Healthy Working Lives Research Group and the Division of Health Systems, Services and Policy in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. He is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow; and President of the Scientific Committee on Work Disability Prevention for the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH). Alex is also Primary Chief Investigator of the ARC funded Workers Voice project.