From slips and trips to stress and illness, workers’ compensation insurance can help you care for your employees when times get tough. As your most important asset, it can put a spanner in the works when a member of your team suffers injury or sickness. In every state across Australia, employers are required by law to provide protection to workers if they suffer a work-related injury or disease with workers’ comp.
You can lessen the emotional and financial challenges for your employees – and yourself as an employer – by having the right cover in place. Whether you employ one or 1,000 people, we’ve put together a guide of what you should know and how to get the right cover.
What does workers’ compensation insurance cover?
If one of your workers is injured or becomes sick in the course of their labour, workers’ compensation insurance can help to cover:
- Medical expenses: such as emergency room visits, necessary surgeries and prescriptions. For example, if one of your tradies wounds their hand in a customer’s home, workers’ compensation insurance can help cover their hospital visit.
- Rehabilitation costs: this includes ongoing medical care that is necessary as a result of the injury, like physiotherapy or psychological care. If one of your employees has incurred a back injury due to heavy lifting, it can cover the costs of trips to the physio.
- Loss of earnings: Workers’ comp can help to replace some of your employee’s lost income when they have time off to recover from a work-related injury or illness. So, if one of your store employees slip and breaks a leg at work, it can help cover the cost of wages during the recovery period.
Who needs workers’ compensation insurance?
As an employer, it’s your duty to ensure that injured or sick workers can bounce back into action faster – without added financial stress. Whether your employee works a full-time, part-time or casual role, is an apprentice, temp or intern, you should have workers’ compensation insurance that covers all of your workers.
Legal requirements do vary from state to state across Australia. Factors like specific roles and the size of your business determine which employees need to be covered by workers’ comp. So, it’s important you’re up to date on what your state requires.
If you’re self-employed, a sole trader or independent contractor, these schemes won’t cover you. You’ll need to take a look at personal accident insurance.
How to minimise risk of injury or illness for your employees
There’s no way to completely minimise workplace risk for your workforce. But as an employer there is a long list of steps you can take to greater safety, including:
- Give all your workers adequate information and training for their role.
- Ensure that workplace infrastructure, equipment and materials are in a suitable and safe condition.
- Always maintain safe handling, packaging, storage and transportation of chemicals, including dangerous goods and harmful materials.
- Provide adequate facilities for all of your workers while at work, including accessible facilities, hygienic toilets and eating areas.
- Continue to review and update your risk management and safety protocols, as well as any training programs.
Talk to an expert
Workers’ compensation insurance is compulsory for a reason – it gives peace mind to yourself and your employees. Still, it can be tricky to determine what level of cover you need and who to turn to for more information.
At Allsure Insurance, we can help you get the right insurance solutions for your workforce, so you know you’re doing right by your employees (and the law!).
Contact us to discuss today.
General Advice Warning
The information above may be regarded as general advice. That is, your personal objectives, needs or financial situations were not taken into account when preparing this information.
Accordingly, you should consider the appropriateness of any general advice we have given you, having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs before acting on it. Where the information relates to a particular financial product, you should obtain and consider the relevant product disclosure statement before making any decision to purchase that financial product.