When the Frontline Turns on Itself: The Quiet Rise of Horizontal Violence in Workers’ Compensation

There is a growing crisis inside the workers’ compensation world that nobody wants to name — not insurers, not government agencies, and certainly not the organisations that rely on the fiction that “support services” are safe places.

It is the rise of horizontal violence — harm that doesn’t come from the system’s traditional power brokers, but from the very people who are supposed to be holding each other up.

And the most alarming part?There is no scaffolding, no safety net, no protective architecture for the people trying to help.

The Helpers Are Becoming Targets

Workers’ compensation has always been a hostile environment for injured people. We know this. But something more insidious is happening now:

The helpers — advocates, peer supporters, lived-experience leaders, caseworkers, and psychological injury specialists — are increasingly absorbing the rage, grief, and unprocessed trauma of a system that refuses to take responsibility.

This is where horizontal violence emerges.

Horizontal violence refers to harm, aggression, or hostility that flows sideways within a community — not from those in power, but between people who are themselves disempowered. It arises in systems where pressure, trauma, and unmet needs have no safe outlet, causing distress to turn inward and spill across peers, helpers, and advocates instead of upward to the structures responsible for the harm.

Horizontal violence is not a failing of injured people — it is the predictable outcome of systems that push people beyond their capacity. The fact that human limitations are not even discussed in this system is alarming in itself.

When systems fail, pressure builds. When pressure builds, it has to go somewhere.

And because the real architects of harm remain protected behind bureaucracy, KPIs, and layers of authority, that pressure gets redistributed laterally — onto the people who are accessible, empathetic, visible, and already carrying their own wounds.

This is not compassion. It is a redirected collapse.

A System Without Scaffolding

In healthy sectors, people supporting the traumatised have:

• supervision

• debriefing

• governance

• psychological contracts

• clear escalation pathways

• organisational protection

Workers’ compensation has none of this.

It is a patchwork of agencies, insurers, NGOs, and volunteer-led initiatives operating inside a climate of suspicion, surveillance, adversarial legalism, and profound moral injury.

Helpers walk into this space with no structural safety, no preparation for the emotional spillover, and no mechanism to protect themselves when that spillover becomes personal.

It doesn’t make anyone “bad.”It makes the system unsafe by design.

When Institutions Collapse, Harm Turns Sideways

Horizontal violence is not born from individuals. It is born from neglect.

When structures fail — when people cannot access justice, cannot get answers, and cannot trust the agencies meant to protect them — the emotional fallout saturates the entire community.

People begin turning on the only people within reach. People who are also harmed by the very system they’re trying to fix.

It is a predictable pattern in any collapsing institution — and it is playing out right now in workers’ compensation.

The Harm No One Wants to Admit

And let us be clear about the cost of this neglect.

When horizontal violence goes unaddressed, it doesn’t stay on social media. It doesn’t stay inside closed groups. It doesn’t stay theoretical.

We are seeing real-world consequences —people being evacuated from their offices, staff receiving threats, workers being stalked, and helpers withdrawing entirely because they no longer feel physically or psychologically safe.

These incidents are not isolated. They are not random. They are not the result of “personal differences.”

They are symptoms of a system that has created a vacuum of safety so wide that distress has nowhere to go but sideways, landing on the very people trying to hold others together.

This Is Not a Community Issue — It Is a Safety Issue

What we are seeing now is not simply distress in the community —it is a safety issue.

Threats, stalking, and office evacuations meet the threshold for formal WHS escalation.

Warnings have been documented at the highest levels. The board has been briefed. Staff safety precautions have already been put in place.

This is not a hypothetical risk, and leadership know it.

The Loss No One Is Accounting For

Good people are walking away. People with lived experience, clinical knowledge, system insight, and the courage to help others navigate an impossible landscape are stepping back — not because they lack dedication, but because the environment has become too dangerous.

No one should have to endure uncontrolled mob abuse for trying to assist others. No one should have to fear threats, stalking, or intimidation simply for showing up to make the system better.

And the onus sits with those who hold power. Politicians and senior leaders have been warned. They know the safety risks. They know people are being driven out. They know that helpers are being harmed.

Our concern here is safety, not conflict.

With every departure, the system loses the very people capable of reform.

And Leadership Cannot Pretend They Didn’t Know

Here is the most disturbing part:

Leadership have been warned — repeatedly. The warnings have been raised, recorded, and circulated. The risks have been escalated.The necessary precautions have already been triggered.

Yet instead of addressing the structural causes, politicians and bureaucratic leaders continue to funnel energy into performative lived experience panels, as though representation can substitute for safety, governance, or trauma-informed systems.

It is convenient.It is cosmetic.It avoids the truth.

Because without proper scaffolding, this is what follows: chaos, fear, and preventable harm.

This Is the Cost We Never Count

We talk about premiums.We talk about impairment thresholds.We talk about KPIs and return-to-work rates.

We never talk about the helpers who burn out, break down, or walk away because the space has become too toxic to stand inside.

We never talk about the horizontal violence that drives them out.

But we need to.

Because this — this quiet, devastating undercurrent — is the fault line running beneath the entire sector.

A system with no scaffolding for its helpers cannot serve the people it was built for. And until we admit that, nothing will change.

And the truth is stark: It is dangerous.Yet still — no one listens.