ACC – still evolving, forty years after its launch

As ACC marks its 40th anniversary this month, Chief Executive Scott Pickering says his focus is on ensuring the Corporation keeps evolving to meet the needs and expectations of modern-day New Zealanders.

“When it was launched in 1974, ACC was a ground-breaking social experiment. Since then, the Scheme has become interwoven with the very fabric of Kiwi life, and there would be few among us who haven’t made an ACC claim.

“Although the Scheme’s founding principles of community responsibility, comprehensive entitlement, complete rehabilitation, real compensation and administrative efficiency remain the same, I’m conscious that we now live in a very different and rapidly changing world. ACC has to keep pace with a constantly changing society.”

Mr Pickering says the key to providing great service is to know what your customers want, and ACC is now putting a lot more effort into getting feedback from Kiwis whose lives the scheme touches.

“When we’re designing or improving services, we’re working really closely with those who use or are involved with the service, so that it ultimately reflects everyone’s needs.”

A good example of this, says Mr Pickering, is ACC’s new high intensity residential rehabilitation service for people with moderate to severe traumatic brain injuries, which kicked off on 1 April. This is the result of a highly collaborative design process.

“The process started by ACC asking clients, their whanau and families how we could best support them. Then we asked the rehabilitation sector to help us design a service that could successfully meet those needs, and also help us deliver the best possible rehabilitation outcomes.”

Mr Pickering says ACC has also increased and broadened the scope of the advisory groups that it works with, and which “provide ACC with a customer perspective on what we’re doing, and how we’re going about it.”

Mr Pickering says he’s extremely proud to be guiding ACC as it enters its fifth decade.

“ACC’s support ensures people receive the rehabilitation they need to get back to their lives as quickly and fully as possible after injury. This benefits individuals, it benefits families, it benefits workplaces and it benefits communities.”

“It’s a far cry from the pre-1974 era, when getting compensation for injury potentially meant taking the person who caused the injury to court, a process that could be timely and expensive, and offered no certainty as to the result.”

ENDS

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