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Aftermath - The Social and Economic Consequences of Workplace Injury and Illness

Summary

To explore the wider costs for society, the Social and Economic Consequences of Workplace Injury and Illness Study aimed to gain an understanding of the full range of consequences of workplace illness and injury.

No one person experiences, sees or accounts for the full consequences of a workplace injury or illness. Consequently, the full depth and breadth of costs and consequences are often not measured or recorded in any official statistic. Often they are not recorded anywhere.

Employees who are harmed will inevitably bear much of the consequences of what happens to them by themselves, as others simply will not experience or fully understand the degree of pain or isolation that they may experience. Likewise, the costs and consequences to family, friends, or work colleagues often goes unrecorded and unobserved, although they are nonetheless real.

Many consequences are unable to be measured directly as an economic cost or some other cost, such as a loss of intimacy between spouses, or the breakdown of a family unit due to an unexpected death. The experience of being harmed at work can be devastating, with profound emotional consequences for all those involved. People may become isolated, estranged from their community and depressed. Isolation and estrangement can become permanent. The widow in the study expressed the profound and lasting impact of her husband’s injury on her:

"There was never a point to say goodbye to a marriage and that of all things of the whole lot I feel I have lost. I have lost my marriage… I always feel I live in the shade, I no longer live in the sun." (Ian’s wife)

To explore these wider costs for society the Social and Economic Consequences of Workplace Injury and Illness Study aimed to gain an understanding of the full range of consequences of workplace illness and injury. It attempted to do this by examining the costs through the experiences of the affected participant in the study, their family, friends, their colleagues, employers and supervisors in the workplace. As much as is possible the study tried to gain a depth of understanding of each case and chart the intangible effects on society. The following report presents the study’s findings.

Author: Richard Whatman, Mary Adams, Jo Burton, Frances Butcher, Sue Graham, Andrew McLeod, Rashmi Rajan, Margaret Bridge and Centre for Research on Work, Education & Business

All publications in subject category: Health & safety in employment