Week 4 of National Safe Work Month is focused on work health and safety hazards inside and out. 

“It doesn’t matter where you work - in an office, in a vehicle, or outside – there are potential work health and safety hazards in all workplaces that need to be managed,” Safe Work Australia says. 

The authority offers a wide range of resources and new data to help businesses and contractors identify hazards and manage and control these risks.

Safe Work Australia’s particularly relevant resources include;

It has also announced the release of the latest national work health and safety statistics, providing important evidence on the state of work health and safety in Australia.

Tragically, 194 people were fatally injured at work in 2020. The stats show that the fatality rate of Australian workers has decreased by 50 per cent since 2007.

They also reveal that 96 per cent of worker fatalities in 2020 were male. Vehicle collisions accounted for 41 per cent of all 2020 worker fatalities. Machinery operators and drivers recorded the highest number of fatalities by occupation (67 fatalities), while the agriculture, forestry and fishing industry had the highest worker fatality rate in 2020. 

There were a total of 120,355 serious workers’ compensation claims in Australia in 2019-20. This is an increase from 114,435 claims in 2018-19. 

Body stressing was the leading cause of serious workers’ compensation claims in 2019-20, accounting for 37 per cent of all serious claims.