Worksafe is dead.

Forget the millions spent on building a brand that was recognised immediately across the state.

Forget the strategies that have made Victoria the clear leader among the states on cutting injuries and fatalities for years. (source)

Worksafe was a brilliant invention. By combining the regulator of workplace safety with the insurer, the economic incentives are all aligned. The company wants to reduce injuries, keep its customers happy and get the ill and injured back to work.

It’s a revolutionary piece of policy-making (mirrored in the design of the Transport Accident Commission, which has helped bring automobile accidents down to their lowest level in history, and among the best in the world.)

A huge part of the job of Worksafe is raising awareness of dangers in workplaces.

This is why Worksafe spent big bucks using proper advertising agencies and sponsors the Western Bulldogs. We are all familiar with its very successful advertising campaigns.

Awareness is enormously important in promoting safety and Worksafe has always used free publicity too. Whenever a prosecution or fatality happened, Worksafe would put out a press release, and papers would report on it.

Worksafe could not prosecute every little business with a safety breach. Amplifying successful prosecutions creates the impression firms face legal risks if they do not focus on safety. Worksafe would also issue a press release whenever a worker was killed or seriously injured at work. This served to keep workplace safety in the news.

But then.

In late 2013, the Hon Gordon Rich-Phillips, minister in charge of Worksafe, must have spotted one of these stories in the newspaper. Was Worksafe “anti-business”? Things changed.

Since then, Worksafe’s media strategy has transformed.

Worksafe issued 41 press releases in the first part of 2013. They did not stint on death and blood and gore, or big whopping fines.

But 2014 is extremely sanitised.

And it’s not as if there was nothing newsworthy. For example, at a factory owned by the company that makes Kettle chips and CCs, a man was dragged into a conveyor belt and lost his arm above the the elbow. That resulted in a $45,000 fine in February.

The organisation that was a world-leading innovator in public policy is no longer free to run in the best interests of workers and its own insurance scheme. It now dances to the tune of the government.

The Age wrote about the minister’s meddling in March. Advertising contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars have been thrown into jeopardy.

Now new ads have hit the papers with the name Worksafe nowhere to be seen.





“The important work that we do across Victoria is much broader than just safety, so using our legal name – VWA – better reflects all areas of our business” – the press release.

Changing your brand when you’ve spent so much on it will make your organisation less effective.

People are already confused about the difference between the Victorian Workcover Authority and Worksafe. (They are the same. The former is the legal name of the organisation. The latter was an effective brand designed to reinforce the idea the organisation should be more dynamic and less bureaucratic .)

Emasculating this powerful and effective brand will mean more injuries. Workers will suffer, and so will business owners who do the right thing and keep their workplaces safe. They will have to pay higher premiums to cover compensation for the injured and dead.

That a good strategy and a powerful brand can be eliminated on a whim of a minister speaks of an anti-intellectual approach in the Coalition party-room. The state government ought to be ashamed.