Determining Your Regular Weekly Earnings

In evaluating your weekly compensation, we assess the wages you earned from your current employer during the 12 months preceding your injury. If you're relatively new to your job or lack a 12-month employment history, we may base your earning calculation on the duration of your employment.

Alternatively, we can use another employee's earnings from the same employer and under the same industrial instrument as a reference.

Employer Excess: For Employers

Inclusions:Wage payments constitute the standard amount you would have received if not for your workplace injury. This amount may differ from your average weekly earnings and encompasses:

• Salary or wages
• Regular overtime
• Higher duties
• Penalty rates
• Allowances (excluding specific categories).

Exclusions:Wage payments do not cover:

• Allowances or expenses associated with travel, car use, relocation, meals, education, residing in rural areas or away from home, entertainment, clothing, tools, and vehicles
• Superannuation
• Any lump-sum termination payments related to superannuation, accrued holidays, long service leave, or other purposes
• Amounts designated as an employer excess.

Wage Calculation:If your weekly earnings varied before your injury, we calculate your regular weekly earnings based on the pay information supplied by your employer. We request your employer to furnish wage details, such as a payroll report or payslips, which we then utilize to determine your standard earnings and the appropriate weekly compensation amount.

Calculating wages

We need some information from you to work out weekly compensation payments for any workers who claim and may need time off work to recover.  When we receive a claim, we’ll ask you to use our secure online services to send us:

• An itemised payroll report for 12 months before the date of injury. The report must show each payment including wages, penalties and allowances for each pay period, OR
• Payslips for 12 months before the date of injury (or from the date they started, if less than 12 months).

Providing wage information is all you need to do – we’ll look after the calculation for you, using the payroll or payslip information you provide.

We’ll then confirm the payment amounts to you and your worker.

If you’re concerned with a calculation, please contact us so we can step you through the workings.  If we're unable to resolve your concerns, we can provide a written explanation and you can seek a review of the decision with the Workers' Compensation Regulator.