Mental health and bullying in Australian workplaces - annual report

Recommendation 18 of the 2012 House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment report, ‘Workplace Bullying: “We just want it to stop”’, requested an annual update of trends in workers compensation data relating to psychosocial health and safety generally and workplace bullying specifically. The statement ‘Psychosocial Health and Safety and Bullying in Australian Workplaces’ is Safe Work Australia’s response to this recommendation. The first annual statement contains the most recently available statistics on accepted workers compensation claims caused by mental stress and specifically the subcategory of mental stress claims - harassment and or bullying.

Key findings presented in the annual statement include:

• the rate of mental stress claims has fallen since 2001-02, but within these claims, the rate of harassment and/or workplace bullying has increased;
• mental stress claims involve substantially longer periods of time off work and considerably higher costs than the typical workers compensation claim;
• the rate of workers compensation claims due to harassment and/or bullying made by females was three times higher than the rate of these claims made by males; and
• the highest rate of claims for harassment and/or bullying occurred in the public order and safety services industry (primarily police services and corrective centres).

The full statement is available from the Safe Work Australia website.