Key WHS Statistics 2024

Safe Work Australia has released its latest report outlining the key WHS statistics across Australia (click here). These statistics provide a good indicator, consistent with risk management principles, of where ‘more focus’ should be implemented across ‘most’ workplaces.

Usual Suspects

All the ‘usual suspects’ made up 8/10 serious claims. A focus on: body stressing, falls, slips and trips, being hit by moving objects, and mental stress will, for most workplaces, address a significant majority of likely risk areas. That increasing workers compensation premium is no accident either – with the serious claims frequency rate increasing by 20.5% compared with the previous 10 years. Labourers (22.9%) and community and personal service workers (20.7%) made up nearly half of those serious claims on an occupational basis.

Mental-health issues still the most costly

Unsurprisingly claims for mental health conditions continued to increase in 2022-2023, and now account for 11% of all serious claims. Mental health conditions accounted for 1 in 10 serious workers compensation claims – a 19.2% increase from last year and a whopping 97.3% increase compared with 10 years ago. The median time lost from work in these cases is more than 5 times that recorded across all injuries/diseases and four times the median workers compensation payments demonstrating that any efforts in this area are likely to have a significant cost benefit analysis.

Fatalities still too high

In 2023, there were 200 workers who died from traumatic injuries while working. Since 2013, the fatality rate has decreased 19% (from 1.7 fatalities per 100,000 workers) however this has remained relatively steady in recent years. NT had the highest incidence of fatalities 3.6 per 100,000 workers followed by Qld and SA (1.8). WA 1(1.7), NSW (1.4) VIC (1.0), TAS (0.7) and Act (0.4).

Youth not so stupid

It seems that either induction processes are working or younger workers are not as ‘bad’ as we thought (or maybe both) because in 2023, workers aged 45 and over still accounted for over half (54%) of all worker fatalities recorded. Workers aged 25-34 had the lowest fatality rate (0.9 fatalities per 100,000 workers), followed by workers aged 35-44 (1.1 fatalities per 100,000 workers).

Work vehicle risks are still underestimated

Most workplaces still underestimated the risks of motor vehicles as it was the most common mechanism for fatalities (42%) being way ahead of the second placed falls from height at 15% which unfortunately was 32% higher than its five year average. It was therefore not surprising that machinery operators and drivers were almost double the fatality rate (8.3 per 100,000 workers) of other occupations.

Action

• check these statistics against your specific workplace statistics - where are you meeting or failing against national benchmarks?

• review these statistics as part of your due diligence framework

• adjust your internal action list to address risk in your workplace

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