The AIHS will be publishing a series of news stories through October to support the four themes of National Safe Work Month. The first week focuses on WHS fundamentals, and gets back to basics by unpacking the fundamentals of WHS. There are a number of fundamentals of good WHS practice, according to Safe Work Australia and industry leaders, who said one of the most important is taking an evidence-based approach to proactively managing WHS risks.
There has been a 56 per cent increase in workers’ compensation claims for assaults and exposure to workplace violence since 2017-18, according to a recent Safe Work Australia report. It found that there were 53,139 accepted workers’ compensation claims for being assaulted and 12,721 accepted claims for exposure to workplace or occupational violence over the past 10 years.
While work-related incidents can have a significant impact on workers and their employers, there is often a tendency to focus narrowly on immediate causes of incidents at the expense of the bigger picture when it comes to WHS investigations.
SafeWork SA recently issued a safety alert following incidents in which machinery has hit live powerlines or scaffolds being built within safe clearance distances. SafeWork SA has received ten notifications so far this year after scaffolds or plant encroached safe clearance distances to underground or overhead utilities.
Australia loses 41,194 work years annually due to work-related injury, disease and mental health conditions – the equivalent of more than 41,000 lost jobs – according to Monash University research. Published in the Medical Journal of Australia, the study aimed to quantify the national burden of working time lost to compensable occupational injury and disease and how working time lost is distributed across age, sex, injury and disease.
There has been a 47.5 per cent increase in primary psychological injury claims from 2019 to 2023 under Allianz Australia’s national claims portfolio. These claims are also resulting in 29.9 per cent increase in average claims costs and 30.2 per cent increase in time loss, equating to some 655,000 days of absence in the Allianz portfolio alone, according to Brianna Cattanach, national manager for mental health at Allianz Australia.
