When workers will not lodge a claim, that is data about your culture

On 2 September 2026, Safe Work Australia published employer-actions guidance on workers' compensation stigma. Its case is that stigma suppresses reporting, discourages people from lodging claims, slows recovery, and reduces the benefit of return to work. The practical steps it lists are familiar: build awareness, use supportive language, run clear and consistent processes, and support return to work actively. It is the third distinct SWA piece on stigma in about a month. The part that matters for psychosocial risk management is the reporting-rate trap. A low number of complaints or claims is routinely read as evidence that there is no problem. It can equally mean people do not feel safe raising one. The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission reached the same conclusion in its 2026 harassment review, and it applies with more force to psychosocial hazards, because under-reporting hides exactly the hazards a risk register is supposed to surface. That has a direct effect on the evidence trail. If consultation responses and incident data are the inputs to a psychosocial risk assessment, and stigma is depressing both, the assessment is working from a distorted picture. It becomes worth documenting what the organisation has done to make reporting safe, not only what was reported, so the record shows the low numbers were tested rather than taken at face value. A practical test: for the last twelve months, could you show what workers raised about psychosocial hazards, through which channels, and whether those channels are ones a worried employee would actually use? If reporting runs through a direct manager and nowhere else, that is the gap, and it is the same structural problem an anonymous or independent channel is built to close. Stigma also shows up at the other end of the chain. A suitable duties plan only works if the worker feels able to engage with it honestly. Prevention and return to work are the same evidence chain, and stigma weakens both ends of it.