How to Heal a Workplace

CHAPTER 8Insurance: How to change the outcomes with attitude

The majority of this book has been written to avoid the impact of workers compensation insurance, national insurance, injury insurance in different parts of the world it is known by different names) — in essence it is the insurance that an employer pays to cover the costs of a worker being injured at work, either psychologically or physically.

I wrote this book to try and prevent the development of psychological injuries, because we all know that prevention is 100 times better than the cure. However, in the case of psychosocial injuries, there are some very important reasons why we want to focus on prevention by improving the psychological safety of our work environments.

In the first instance, it is about saving your business money on insurance premiums. Insurance companies are very good at ensuring that they are covered for their risk, so if you have several claims for psychosocial injuries, your premiums will increase significantly. The main reason for this is because the costs of psychological injury are significantly higher than any other type of injury, both in lost time and the cost of treatment to support recovery.

Research highlights that injured worker's experience significantly more negative outcomes once they start interacting with an insurance company.³⁹ In most cases, this is because the system itself is disenfranchising for the worker. Most insurance companies require the injured worker to ‘prove’ liability, ...