THE IMPACT OF WORK SAFETY

Workplace safety is a topic that we likely all feel like we have a reasonable understanding of as incidents caused by lack of attention, poor forethought, and misfortune. But it is difficult to fully understand how widespread and common incidents are in the workplace without seeing work safety statistics. You’ll hear a story here or there of something going wrong on a site and it’ll weigh on your mind but sometimes it takes an accident happening to someone you know or yourself to start really taking workplace safety seriously. That’s why we want to help spread information on the impact and frequency of workplace incidents and work safety statistics in Australia, as a background to support the purpose of our safety speakers.
The information being shown is not our own, while we have stories and experiences to share, we aren’t work safety professionals or researchers, The information has been taken from research and reports done by Safe Work Australia on workplace safety incidents and work safety claims.

THE IMPACT OF WORK SAFETY PERFORMANCE

In the work safety statistics shown below you’ll find the frequency rate of serious work safety claims made in the 2018-2019 period as well as the spread of serious claims made during the 2017 – 2018 period.

Serious claims are claims which consist of five or more days off from work. The severity and range of injuries or circumstances that could lead to a serious claims are broad, covering both physical and mental health related issues.

The purpose of sharing this information is to give an insight into how frequent and regular workplace incidents occur, which is why safety speakers serve an important role in reminding workers as to what just one claim could represent.

The information below has been taken from the Safe Work Australia – Comparative Performance Monitoring report 22nd Edition – part 1.

The incidence rate per 1,000 employees in 2018-2019

9.4 Serious Claims

The rate of claims with more than 52 weeks of compensation (2017-2018)

11% serious claims

The rate of claims with less than 8 weeks of compensation (2017-2018)

49% serious claims

Australian long term claims which are claims with 12 weeks or more of compensation incidence rate has remained stable between 2013-2014 and 2017-2018

The incidence rate of long term serious claims per 1,000 employees was

3.2

THE IMPACT OF WORK SAFETY FATALITIES

Finally, there is the worst-case scenario, the following data concerns deaths due to workplace incidents.

Often it can be difficult to relate numbers to lives when shown a statistic, so we ask you to remember that each number represents a tragic event.

Avoiding workplace fatalities is the goal of workplace safety as no one should be at risk of dying on the job and in recent years the number of deaths has decreased as emphasis on workplace safety has grown through the efforts of various groups and organisations.

One of our speakers has experienced the loss of a family member to a tragic accident and can share their story on how it impacted their life.

The information below has been taken from the Safe Work Australia – Work-related Traumatic Injury Fatalities Australia 2019.

The number of those fatally injured at work (2018-2019)

183 Workers

The fatality rate per 100,000 workers

1.4 Workers

62% of fatalities were in these three industries

Those industry fatality rates have decreased since 2017