Real voices, real change: making room for connection after workplace injury

When someone is injured at work, treatment and financial support matter. So does having someone to talk to who understands what they are going through.

As World Mental Health Day approaches on 10 October, this year’s global theme—Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change—invites us to consider whether people’s experiences genuinely influence the support available to them.

Here in Australia, Mental Health Australia’s Together We Thrive campaign highlights connection and belonging. In NSW, Wayahead’s Mental Health Month theme, A Little Connection Goes a Long Way, brings that message into everyday life.

For someone navigating workplace injury, connection may begin with a colleague checking in, a welcoming peer group or a conversation with someone who understands. These moments deserve a place alongside treatment, financial support and practical recovery planning.

Together, the campaigns raise a question for workplaces and recovery systems: if connection matters, how are we making it possible—and sustaining it when people need it most?

What WHO recognises

The World Health Organization’s 2019 QualityRights guidance on peer support groups identifies potential benefits including reduced isolation, stronger relationships, hope and practical assistance accessing community resources.

It describes support that is mutual and shaped by members’ needs and preferences. Groups should ideally be independent of mental health and social services, although those services may help establish them. (pp. 1–2)

The guidance also cautions that expecting someone to meet another person’s timeframe for healing and recovery can create unnecessary pressure and problems. (p. 15)

Although this document concerns mental health peer support rather than workers’ compensation specifically, its principles offer useful questions for systems supporting people after workplace injury.

People are building connections themselves

Online communities provide one way for injured workers to find others with similar experiences. They can offer opportunities to exchange information, ask questions and feel less alone.

The Injured Worker Support Team (IWST) is one such community. Independent of unions, it operates through an online Facebook group and has recently become a not-for-profit organisation.

Members of IWST appear in Shattered, sharing their individual experiences of workplace injury and navigating the system. Their stories are featured on our Support Networks: Recovery Is Rarely Solo page.

Another Victorian example is the Injured Workers Support Network, which works in partnership with the Victorian Trades Hall Council. It describes peer support, community, independent information and campaigning for improved treatment of injured workers as central to its work.

These groups have different structures and relationships. Both illustrate people creating opportunities for connection around a shared experience.

Their work prompts a wider question: how can recovery systems help independent support remain accessible and sustainable?

How funding decisions recognise the need for independent peer support and helplines deserves transparent examination. These services may meet different needs, but connection should have a meaningful place in discussions about recovery.

WHO’s guidance does not require funding for a particular service. It does, however, recognise the value of support that people with lived experience create and shape themselves.

Responding to distress while keeping people safe

Accounts of occupational violence within the workers’ compensation sector raise serious concerns for the safety of people working in it and those seeking assistance.

These accounts do not, by themselves, establish why violence occurs. They do prompt questions about how distress is recognised and supported. Are people able to find help before they reach a crisis? Do they have somewhere to ask questions, express frustration safely and speak with someone who understands?

Distress does not excuse violence. Staff, injured workers and families all deserve safety, dignity and respectful communication.

One response worth developing is accessible peer support, with trained peer supporters, clear boundaries, confidentiality and pathways to additional professional or crisis assistance. This could give people another place to seek understanding and build connection while navigating difficult circumstances.

Whether peer support can help reduce escalation in this setting needs evaluation; its value as a source of connection and understanding deserves consideration in its own right.

Peer support cannot resolve every dispute or replace timely treatment, clear decisions and fair processes. It can form part of a broader response that takes both distress and safety seriously.

If connection is recognised as important to mental health, we should consider how to provide it safely and sustainably—including for people whose distress may otherwise go unheard.

Whose recovery timetable?

A recovery plan can be helpful. It can clarify responsibilities, arrange suitable duties and provide opportunities to review progress.

Safe Work Australia recommends developing return-to-work plans collaboratively with injured workers. Its national strategy seeks a timely, safe and durable return to work, recognising that recovery is influenced by interacting individual, organisational and system factors.

The difficulty arises when an expected date becomes a judgment about the person.

A review can ask: Is the support appropriate? What has changed? Is the proposed work safe and sustainable? Does the plan need adjusting?

Pressure can arise when the question becomes simply: Why have you not recovered yet?

An administrative milestone does not, by itself, tell us how someone is feeling, whether treatment is helping or whether suitable work is genuinely available. A plan needs room to respond to those circumstances.

WHO’s guidance invites us to consider whether individual recovery needs genuinely inform these decisions. Planning and personal recovery can work together when review dates create opportunities to listen and adjust.

Support also needs care

Peer support requires more than bringing people together. WHO emphasises confidentiality, voluntary participation and the right to listen without sharing. It recognises limits to what a group can provide and the importance of sharing responsibilities to prevent burnout. (pp. 8–9, 14)

These principles matter in both organised groups and informal online communities. People need room to participate at their own pace, protect personal information and seek additional help when needed.

The people sustaining these networks need support too. Recognising their contribution means considering the time, resources and responsibility involved.

Listening must influence what happens next

For workplaces, insurers, regulators and service providers, these October campaigns offer an opportunity to consider how connection and lived experience shape everyday practice: the support offered, the language used, the flexibility of plans and the ways people remain included.

For employers, this may begin with respectful contact, a consistent point of communication and genuine discussion about safe, suitable work. For those designing and funding services, it means examining whether people can access independent support that meets their needs.

For Shattered, this returns us to the question at the heart of the series:

When work changes a life, what happens next?

Hearing people’s experiences is a beginning. Real change requires those experiences to influence the response.

WHO source: Peer support groups by and for people with lived experience: WHO QualityRights guidance module, 2019. Page references refer to the document’s printed page numbers.