Research at WorkSafe

What we do

WorkSafe's Research team looks after research:

• design and methodology
• project management and contract management
• governance including ethics
• insights, impact and dissemination.

Our team delivers high-quality research activities. These inform WorkSafe's products and services for prevention and recovery.

We invest in research which:

• aligns with our corporate strategy and business priorities
• has impact
• is consistent with ethical standards
• is a catalyst for change.

How we do it

WorkSafe's research generates evidence-based insights. These insights:

• assist informing things like policy and guidance material
• are translatable into prevention-led and client focused action.

We have guiding principles that prioritise and steer research decisions.

Research Program Areas

Some examples of programs from the Research Business Plan are as follows.

Prevention

• Evaluation of OHS regulations and exposure to hazards.
• Enforcement research - notices issuance, inspectorate service, community perceptions of enforcement approach.
• Evaluation of the reforms of regulatory practice against best practice regulatory principles.
• Systems thinking in prevention and health and safety.
• Cultural diversity research.
• Preventing occupational violence, sexual harassment and gendered violence.
• Addressing issues of racism, sexism and discrimination in workplace bullying.
• Injury prevention.
• Farm safety research.
• Community research to evaluate public education campaigns, community experience and engagement with WorkSafe.

Recovery

• Use of mixed methods evaluation of new support services. These include treatment pathways and case management models to support injured worker recovery.
• Clinical research, decision-making approaches, clinical evidence reviews.
• Injured worker, employer representative survey and inspectorate survey.

WorkSafe's Ethical Research Guidance Framework and Assessment

This framework assists with risk evaluation. It includes the ethical consideration of human research activities at WorkSafe.

We use this process to embed ethical practice in our human research. This fulfils both legal and ethical requirements.

We give the assessment tool to staff and external research providers before conducting research. This is unless they're exempt after obtaining human research ethics committee (HREC) approval. External providers must complete this assessment before:

• research can begin
• release of full funding for the proposal.

External researchers must read and understand the framework before completing the assessment. They can refer to it for clarification and further insight into ethics at WorkSafe.

WorkSafe reviews completed assessments. We do this against the 'National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research'. The National Health and Medical Research Council (HREC) formed this statement. Sign-offs will also show if there's a need for further review by the HREC.

Contact WorkSafe if you:

• need help with completing your assessment
• have queries on this form.

You can do this by emailing [email protected].