Return to Work Innovations

About us

Return to Work Innovations is a division of WorkSafe. We were established in 2024 to partner with organisations to drive innovation and improve return to work outcomes.

Strong evidence points to the benefits of providing injured workers with the right support to stay connected with work throughout their recovery. That includes keeping in touch, and returning to modified, meaningful work when it’s safe to do so. We know that staying connected in this way can provide injured workers with a sense of belonging, structure and dignity. That doesn’t just help improve their own recovery experience, it has a positive impact on their family, colleagues and employer as well.

Despite these known benefits, many people face real barriers when it comes to returning to work – and especially people with work-related mental injury.

At WorkSafe, we realised that if we wanted to achieve better return to work outcomes, we needed to do things differently. We challenged ourselves to consider:

• How might we innovate and pilot return to work initiatives that have real impact for workers and employers?
• And how might we work with organisations in new ways to drive innovative approaches to achieve that impact?

Return to Work Innovations is investing $50 million over three years into a program of pilots, grants and projects designed to support organisations to trial new approaches to improving return to work outcomes.