About WorkSafe

Reducing workplace harm

WorkSafe strives to prevent workplace injuries, illness and fatalities and for more than 35 years has raised the standard of health and safety in Victorian workplaces.

We use a range a tools and tactics to ensure workplaces are safer. This includes inspections, campaigns, education programs, targeted interventions, guidance, warnings, enforcement and prosecutions.

We educate, support and guide Victorian workplaces to provide a safe environment for their workers. We also hold negligent employers to account and enforce occupational health and safety laws if workers are subjected to risk or harm. Victoria remains one of the safest places in the world to work today and we are proud of our role in this.

Improving outcomes for injured workers

While preventing injuries is always our first preference and priority, when a workplace injury does occur, our job – and our focus – is on improving outcomes for those who are injured. Supporting them to recover and, where possible, return to safe work.

We provide a range of benefits including weekly income payments, hospital, medical and allied health treatment, personal and household help, common law benefits and lump sums for permanent impairment.

Yet our role is more than just a funder of benefits. We know the best outcomes are achieved when workers and employers work together with injured workers, their families and treating health professionals. Our role is to facilitate this - to listen to our clients, understand the goals and outcomes they would like to achieve and tailor an appropriate response. A workplace injury can significantly change a person's life. We are in a privileged position to make a difference, and help some of our community's most vulnerable.

Our ambition, our approach

WorkSafe's ambition is to be a world leader in harm prevention and recovery after a workplace injury. To do this, we are choosing to focus our efforts and resources where we can make a meaningful difference to the health, safety and well-being of Victorian workers.

To reduce workplace harm, we are targeting the 5000 Victorian workplaces that need the most support and attention - where harm is, or is likely to, occur. We are addressing the most prevalent causes of fatalities, and the high risk industries where they happen. We are supporting workplaces to be mentally healthy, and reduce mental injury. Our COVID-19 response continues, as we educate workplaces on how to operate safely with the virus. We're prioritising the early identification of current and emerging occupational illness and disease such as asbestos and silicosis. And we are supporting and empowering Victoria's network of Health and Safety representatives – our eyes and ears on the ground.

To improve outcomes for injured workers, we're identifying early those injured workers whose recovery or return to work is not going to plan, and providing targeted intervention and tailored support. We're making it easier for injured workers and employers to interact with us through better automation and online functionality. And we are reviewing and improving every interaction we have with an injured worker from the beginning of the process, when they lodge a workers compensation claim, to how we support their recovery and safe return to work.

WorkSafe's job is to protect every Victorian worker from harm. Our community expects and deserves nothing less.