Should your employer report a Queensland work injury?

Some employers are reluctant to report when a work injury happens. They are afraid that their insurance premiums will go up. They are also concerned that they may be prosecuted for breaching workplace health and safety laws.  Here is the bottom line: as an injured worker, none of this should matter to you. The employer has clear obligations to report your injury and it’s in your best interest that they do so.

Employer must tell WorkCover if a worker is injured

The legislation is very clear: if you suffer an injury at work for which compensation may be payable, the employer must report it to WorkCover Queensland. They must report it even if you don’t ask for it to be reported. It is an offence for the employer if they don’t report the injury.

Some very large employers are “self-insured”. This means they don’t have to buy insurance from WorkCover Queensland. Instead, they have an internal division which acts like a workers’ compensation insurance company. Even if your employer is self insured, they have the same reporting obligations. They must report the incident to the staff member who is designated as a decision make for insurance claims.

Can my employer just pay my wages and medical bills without reporting to WorkCover?

Some employers will tell you that making a workcover claim is unnecessary. They will offer to continue to pay your wages and even your medical bills, as long as you don’t make a workcover claim. This is a bad idea.

Even if the employer decides to make a payment to you, they must separately report this payment to WorkCover Queensland. In other words, not only do they have an obligation to report the injury, now they have a separate obligation to report the payment. If they breach this obligation, that is a separate offence.

Why is it important to get WorkCover involved?

WorkCover will refer you to specialists who can properly assess your injuries and provide treatment. For example, if you need surgery, WorkCover will arrange and pay for private hospital surgery much faster than if this is left for you or your employer to organise.  As another example, if you have suffered psychological injuries (anxiety, depression, PTSD and so on) then WorkCover will arrange for a psychologist or a psychiatrist to see you and treat you. Often these injuries are “secondary”, meaning that you have suffered a physical injury but as time goes on you also develop a psychological condition. If your employer wanted to “get away with it” without reporting your injury, they may pay for treating your physical injuries, but it’s highly unlikely that they would fund psychological treatment.

The other point is this: if an employer doesn’t want to report the incident, that’s usually an indicator that the employer has financial problems. They may be able to keep paying your wages for a little while, but what if you need treatment for a couple of years and in the meantime the employer goes bankrupt? WorkCover would have kept paying you, but the employer might run out of money…

Workplace health and safety reporting obligations

Separate from reporting for workcover purposes, the employer also has an obligation to report incidents which cause death or serious injury (spinal surgery, injuries that require hospitalisation, head, eye and burn injuries). Work Health and Safety Queensland may then undertake an investigation into the incident.

In our experience, often our clients’ concern is to make sure that similar incidents don’t happen to others.  That’s precisely the reason why employers are required to report serious incidents.

25% Cap on legal costs

In all of our personal injury compensation matters, we act on a  No Win – No Fee basis. What that means is, there’s no upfront cost to you.

In Queensland, most compensation firms will charge you 50% of your compensation amount – the maximum allowed at law. This is very expensive. Our fee is different. We will cap our fee at 25% . Remember also, these are the maximum fees we will charge. If our fee in your claim is less, then we charge the lesser amount.

Before you engage us, we will provide you a written Disclosure Notice and a Client Service Agreement. These documents set out in detail the service we provide, as well as our fees and outlays. Before you sign anything, you can take these documents home with you, and study them with your family. You can take as long as you need, there is never any pressure from us. If anything in these documents doesn’t make sense to you, we can discuss it with you and you are free to ask another lawyer to give you advice.  And remember, no win – no fee agreements come with a 5 day cooling off period for extra peace of mind.