Accident at work claim and glasses on a table.

Morale is at rock bottom at Victoria’s Accident Compensation Conciliation Service with a recent recruitment process reportedly flawed and riddled with conflicts of interest, according to staff.

After Crikey ran an item on April 4, detailing issues with the service, a flurry of tipsters got in touch to have their say. Complaints range from poor financial management, to overly harsh staff renewal during a recent restructure and decreasing client satisfaction.

The ACCS is a statutory authority which aims to facilitate conflict resolution between injured workers and their employers.

“Last month ACCS let go of ten conciliation officers and promptly hired ten new replacements on higher remuneration. It also hired two new deputy CEOs and executive assistants and more project people,” one tipster said.

“The company only has about 25 mediators.”

Another tipster suggested that this churn of almost 50% — part of what “seems to be a concerted effort on the part of the current CEO to bring in new blood” — had robbed the organisation of highly skilled and experienced staff. The process was drawn out, and some of their “best and most experienced colleagues” were not successful, they said.

“No wonder staff morale is rock bottom and the service ratings are declining!”  

Meanwhile outgoing CEO/senior conciliation officer Anita Kaminksi — due to step down in October — successfully applied for one of the conciliation officer roles, which pays $180,000 per year.

Another source said that, apart from being an important service in returning injured workers to employment, “the under performance is costing the public financially as well.”  The average cost to deal with a new claim jumped from $965 in 2015-16 to $1,517 in 2016-17, and operating costs rose to $19.26 million compared to $15.56 million in the previous year, despite a 21% drop in the number of claims received.

There are also concerns about the service’s level of independence. “It’s meant to be fully independent from WorkSafe so that injured workers’ OHS disputes are treated fairly and impartially but the ACCS budget is held by WorkSafe (ACCS has no bank account) and WorkSafe pays all its bills and salaries,” said one source.

“ACCS uses WorkSafe IT systems and so all injured worker dispute information is held on WorkSafe servers and anyone in WorkSafe can see into this data without ACCS knowing, ACCS leases its office space from WorkSafe.”

A new board was appointed in March 2017, but tipsters say it’s done little to resolve these issues. One tipster concludes the small size and paltry cost of the agency makes reform unlikely: “[It’s] a monopoly inside another monopoly; ACCS gets 100% of its clients from WorkSafe … it is also simply too small to matter to government higher ups and is a guppy amidst the state insurance schemes … It is like a forgotten border town where the rules are negotiable, except that it is located at Spring St.”

Kaminski confirmed to Crikey she had been successful in applying for a conciliation officer role she would take on after finishing as CEO and that there had been 11 new CO appointments. She insisted that the organisation had conducted an “open, fair and transparent merit-based recruitment process”.

“The ACCS now has an independent board, a qualified senior management team and 28 highly skilled conciliation officers,” she said.