Everyone deserves to feel safe, including our people at their place of work. In this guide discover what you can expect from us, and what we expect from you.
icare provides insurance and care services for the people, businesses and communities of NSW.
Everyone deserves to feel safe, including our people at their place of work. Through this guide we encourage respectful engagement to focus on solutions by clarifying:
- what respectful behaviour is
- responsibilities when working with our people
- unreasonable conduct and how our people will respond, and
- options available to drive solutions with respectful behaviour
This guide applies to all those icare serve when interacting with our people at icare, or organisations on our behalf, including our claims service providers (EML, Allianz, DXC Technology, GIO, Gallagher Bassett and QBE).
You may also receive information sheets or guides from our teams to facilitate your interactions with us.
Your responsibilities when working with our people
We’re here to help you
Our mission is to deliver quality insurance and care, which includes working together for the best result. Here is what you can expect from us, and what we ask from you.
What we’ll do
When you contact us, you can expect our people to treat you with care, respect, fairness and provide extra assistance if you need it and it is available.
We aim to do this by being:
- effective (doing what we say we will)
- accountable (taking responsibility and fixing issues)
- transparent (keeping you informed and explaining clearly)
- respectful (respecting your privacy and personal preference)
- considerate (making arrangements to support your cultural and linguistic needs, provide avenues to make a complaint and access to your information)
When you contact us
We expect you to be respectful to our people.
Respectful behaviour includes:
- listening to be curious
- learning and asking questions to understand
- doing what you say you will do and being honest when communicating
- allowing fairness and empathy to guide your actions
- explaining what is needed without yelling or using threatening or abusive language and actions
- providing us with accurate and timely information to help us support you.
Abusive, threatening or violent behaviour – unreasonable conduct
When there is abusive, threatening or violent behaviour that impacts the health, safety and security of our people, we consider this ‘unreasonable conduct’.
Unreasonable conduct includes:
- anger or aggression towards an individual
- verbal or written abuse, threatening or violent behaviour
- threats of harm to self or others
- stalking (in person or online)
- posting material online about our people
- making derogatory, discriminatory, racial or defamatory remarks
- presenting under the influence of alcohol or an illicit substance
Ongoing unreasonable conduct like the following, shifts our focus, from, providing you with the care and services you need, to, managing behaviours and creating safe spaces:
- refusal to accept explanations or decisions that are informed, clear and fair
- making excessive phone calls, visits, and letters over a short period of time
- demanding control of what we do or the interaction with a specific person when it is not practical or reasonable to expect this
- demanding service or results we cannot provide
How we respond to unreasonable conduct
If behaviour makes our people feel unsafe or puts them at risk of harm, we will take appropriate steps like ending contact and if necessary, reporting violence, threats, harm, abuse, harassment and stalking to the police.
Generally, we will let you know that the behaviour is not okay and ask you to stop. If the behaviour continues you will be warned that contact will be ending, and when it continues, contact will end.
If unreasonable behaviour is repeated, we may change the way we communicate with you which could include one or more of the following:
- one person to contact
- a set time, day and length of time to communicate
- a set number of communications
- communication only on specific topics
- how contact can be made. For example, using email only
A trusted support person to act on your behalf
Please let us know if
- you need someone else to deal with us and we can arrange authorisation
- you would like an interpreter, and we will access available support for you
Extra assistance in difficult times
We appreciate that in addition to the support we provide, there are other circumstances that make it more difficult to communicate with respect, like financial difficulty, carer responsibilities and so on.
We encourage you to share this with our people so they can seek and access relevant support that might be available and useful to your situation.
If you would like hearing or speech support through the National Relay Service, contact 13 36 77 for Telephone Typewriter (TTY) or 1300 555 727 for Speak and Listen and ask for icare on 13 77 22.
Print a pdf copy by clicking here
Conduct guide for those we serve
