High staff turnover at the Accident Compensation Corporation has been blamed on a "bullying culture" and massive workload that remains in spite of Labour Department investigations four years ago.

Since May last year more than 630 staff have resigned - out of a total of about 2600 - and since 2003 56 personal grievance cases have been taken against the crown entity.

The figures reveal about one in four staff have left while comparable government agencies such as Housing New Zealand and Auckland District Health Board lost less than 15 per cent of their workforce.

A former employee in ACC's Wellington office, Leon Mitchell, said there was definitely a "bullying culture" and the management approach was "dictatorial".

"They were inflexible and had unrealistic workload expectations. Within a space of a few weeks four members of my team resigned. A number of people in the office had issues but were afraid to speak out."
 

He resigned in May because of workplace difficulties and made a formal complaint to ACC, but decided against taking legal action.

A current ACC employee said the management attitude had caused a lot of people with skill and experience to leave.

"There are so many unhappy people. There have been many complaints from staff and nothing seems to be done about them."

In 2004 the Labour Department investigated complaints of overwork, stress and bullying that had led to nervous breakdowns in some cases.

Figures also showed ACC had spent $1.8 million since 2003 on psychometric testing of staff - a system that is designed to fit prospective employees, normally managers, to their job role and reduce turnover.

In response to questions about bullying, ACC chief executive Jan White said there was only a 14.8 per cent staff turnover, which was on a par with other government agencies.

Staff satisfaction had steadily improved in the past decade. "Staff are our single most important resource and there are good indicators that overall we treat them well."

Dr White said there were only about 10 cases of grievances each year which, though unfortunate, was not a cause for concern.

The Public Service Association, a union that represents 680 ACC staff, said it believed difficult and demanding work and high stress levels - rather than bullying - were the main cause of staff leaving.

PSA national secretary Brenda Pilott said: "We are not aware that ACC has a higher number of [bullying] accusations than other government agencies. We're more concerned about these workload issues and we want ACC to work with the union to address them."

Dominion