INDUSTRY ADVICE FOR THE TURF INDUSTRY

Next year, most WorkCover activities will be centred around a state-wide compliance and education program – ensuring businesses have appropriate workers’ compensation insurance, declare superannuation and understand ‘who is a worker’.  Audits undertaken this year indicated a number of wage components (superannuation, payments to contractors deemed as workers, salary sacrifice) were either under or not declared (for varied reasons).  The 16/17 objective is not based on charging more premium, rather ensuring all policy holders have the right level of cover – nothing more or less.  For example there are situations, post our compliance review where we provide refunds to customers because they have included wages not assessable (directors wages for example).

Some activities or outworking’s include:

• We have refreshed the premium renewal experience to make it more intuitive and remind customers of including commonly missed wage items
• We will continue to use sophisticated data matching systems, to identify the employers at highest risk of being under-insured and uninsured
• Continue to work with customers with desk based audits, onsite audits or self-review through our “Cover Check” online tool
• Continue with targeted site visits across the state.  For example, this current year we under took a lot of site visits at large construction projects and shopping centres
• Continue to educate at industry events we attend
• Making contact with all new ABN holders who have indicated they are likely to employ and informing them of their workers’ compensation obligations
• Targeted mail outs where data matching has identified a specific portion of wages were not included, for example, superannuation.

We believe undertaking the state-wide compliance and education program is another strategy to protect the fairness and sustainability of the workers’ compensation fund.

If you would like to discuss any of the above or work together with some joint educational material please let me know.

As a side note, the premium overall rate remained at $1.20 per $100 of wages and the gazette has now been released. Please click here https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/news/2016/20162017-workcover-queensland-industry-classifications-released to take you to the Gazette.