Insurance & Workers' Compensation · Australia
Office-based work; fatigue risk comes from long hours and catastrophe-response surge rosters. The direct safety consequence is low; the cost is errors, productivity and wellbeing.
Reg Watch
Regulatory change that affects how you manage fatigue in insurance & workers' compensation: what has changed in the last 12 months, and what is on the way.
Recent changeFrom 1 July 2026
Applies across industries in Australia
From 1 July 2026 NSW requires you to follow approved codes, including the fatigue code, or manage risk to an equal or higher standard. Victoria's psychological health regulations apply from 1 December 2025.
Read the changeUpcoming changeExpected from 1 July 2027Within 12 months
Safe Work Australia's Best Practice Review of the model WHS laws was due to go to WHS ministers in August 2026. It is not yet public and no amendments are proposed, so no change date is set. NSW psychological injury compensation narrows again from 1 July 2027 (26% WPI threshold for ongoing weekly benefits).
Regulatory changes checked as at 1 October 2026.
Regulation
APRA's operational risk standard has applied to general insurers, life companies, friendly societies and private health insurers since 1 July 2025. It requires you to identify the people your critical operations depend on and keep access to them, but it says nothing about fatigue, hours or rostering and imposes no workforce health duty. Catastrophe surge work is governed instead by the general work health and safety duty, the reasonable additional hours standard and the right to disconnect, and by nothing else.
SWALogos identify the regulator and don’t imply endorsement.
Your state or territory work health and safety regulator, the Fair Work Commission and Fair Work Ombudsman, and the Australian Human Rights Commission govern you as an employer. On the claims side, the workers compensation authorities - SIRA and icare in NSW, WorkSafe Victoria, WorkCover Queensland, WorkCover WA, ReturnToWork SA and their equivalents - set the standards you work to as an insurer or self-insurer.
Ensure health and safety so far as is reasonably practicable, and manage fatigue inside that duty: surge rostering, consecutive days on a catastrophe deployment, workload and the drive home. Do not require someone to monitor or respond outside working hours where a refusal would be reasonable. Keep ordinary hours to 38 a week plus only reasonable additional hours, with risk to health and safety the first factor. In New South Wales, from 1 July 2026, follow the approved fatigue code or manage the hazard to an equivalent or higher standard.
Work health and safety breaches are prosecuted across three offence categories, with officers personally liable under the due diligence duty, and every jurisdiction now has an industrial or workplace manslaughter offence. A right to disconnect dispute goes to the Fair Work Commission, which must start dealing with a stop order application within fourteen days, and breaching an order is a civil remedy contravention. Psychological injury claims from surge work are compensable and premium-affecting.
Breach of a Fair Work Commission stop order carries 60 penalty units, which on the Commonwealth penalty unit of $364 in force from 1 July 2026 is $21,840 for an individual and $109,200 for a body corporate. Commonwealth, NSW and ACT work health and safety maximums were indexed on 1 July 2026. There is no APRA penalty for employee fatigue, because CPS 230 imposes no workforce health obligation to breach.
On the record
No Australian court, coroner, investigator or regulator has published a finding linking fatigue to an incident in insurance. The duty to manage fatigue still sits within the primary duty of care under work health and safety law.
Sources: Work Health and Safety Act 2011; Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 (Vic); Fair Work Act 2009 (right to disconnect; reasonable additional hours); SIRA Standards of Practice for psychological injury claims; Disability Discrimination Act 1992.
Fatigue-critical roles
The roles where a fatigued worker is most likely to cause serious harm, the tasks that carry the risk, and why fatigue builds up in them.
| Role | Risk | High-risk tasks | Why fatigue builds |
|---|---|---|---|
Loss adjuster / building assessor (catastrophe deployment)Rules
| High risk | Driving long distances into disaster zones, roof and structural inspections of damaged buildings, entering flood- and fire-damaged sites; late report writing | Catastrophe deployments of 2-6 weeks, 12-14 h days 7 days a week, long drives, hotel sleep away from home |
Risk engineer (property and casualty)Rules
| Elevated risk | Site surveys at mines, plants and construction sites (work at height, live process areas), long regional drives and flights between surveys | Multi-site travel weeks, early flights and long drives, irregular hours; day work |
IT operations engineer / production support (on-call)Rules
| Elevated risk | Overnight batch, core policy and claims-platform incidents, change windows and cyber alerts where an error causes major outage or data loss | Weekly on-call rotations with night pages, weekend change windows 22:00-04:00, then normal day work |
Medical assistance coordinator / travel assistance case managerRules
| Elevated risk | Overnight coordination of medical evacuations and hospital guarantees for travellers abroad, relaying clinical information and time-critical approvals | 24/7 rotating shifts across time zones, night shifts, high-stress calls |
How the suite fits
Grades describe how strongly a product connects to an obligation. None discharges an obligation, and none carries a compliance warranty.
Sleepfit measures sleep obtained across your claims and underwriting cohort and screens for the disorders behind it, supporting the fatigue risk assessment your safety duty requires during surge work.
About SleepfitYour WHS duty to inform and train, and the psychosocial rules, do not name fatigue training; in NSW the approved fatigue code does. Awareness eLearning gives your claims teams fatigue and sleep content with a completion record.
About Awareness eLearningWas It Fatigue? structures a post-incident fatigue analysis, supporting the review of control measures that your work health and safety duty requires you to carry out after an incident occurs.
About Was It Fatigue?SleepWellBaby supports parents returning to work after a birth, when broken infant sleep is at its worst. No Australian regulation requires it and none is engaged; it is offered as a benefit only.
About SleepWellBabyFatiguefit4Duty is built for safety-sensitive roles at the point of duty. Insurance and claims roles are generally not safety-sensitive and no Australian rule requires a fitness-for-duty check, so nothing is engaged.
About Fatiguefit4DutyRecommended bundle
Every bundle is priced on prevalence: your whole cohort gets access, and you pay for the share predicted to need each product. How pricing works.
Sleep health and sleep and fatigue education for the whole workforce.
Sleep health plus new-parent support.
Why this pairing in Australia
Your claims and underwriting teams hold no safety-sensitive roles, so your duty is s 19 of the WHS Act. Sleepfit screens for sleep disorders and measures sleep obtained; Awareness eLearning supplies content with a completion record; SleepWellBaby is an employee benefit. Family is the lighter option.
Tell us roughly how many people you employ. Your snapshot models how many are likely sleeping poorly and what it costs, from published research for insurance & workers' compensation. Then choose who you’d cover, and we’ll take you to the right next step.
