Safe Work Australia unveils new tools to help assess, report WHS performance
Safe Work Australia has unveiled new tools, including a new interactive dashboard, to help users assess, measure, and report on work health and safety (WHS) performance.
The new dashboard provides employers with workers' compensation injury frequency data with breakdown options to support benchmarking.
According to Safe Work, the new dashboard draws its data from the agency's national workers' compensation statistics, which it can filter by industry, occupation, injury type, and severity.
The new dashboard will also be replacing the current Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) calculator, which will only remain available until March 2025.
"While the LTIFR is one way to assess the impact of poor WHS on productivity, this measure has limitations when used to measure WHS performance," Safe Work Australia said in a media release.
The new interactive dashboard is just one of the two tools unveiled by Safe Work on Thursday.
The second is a new webpage that can help employers interpret data and understand the principles underpinning WHS reporting and performance, according to Safe Work.
The new tools will be available on the agency's data website, Our Data. Your Stories.
Preliminary data from Safe Work Australia revealed that 133 employees have been killed at work this year across the country as of November 21.
Sectors that have recorded double-digit figures in workplace fatalities include transport, postal, and warehousing (41); agriculture, forestry, and fishing (31); as well as construction (24).
"The preliminary fatalities dashboard shows the latest estimate of the number of workers killed in Australian workplaces this year, excluding deaths resulting from diseases, natural causes and suicides," Safe Work said on the website.
"Preliminary data often comes from initial media reports and is usually less than the number of finalised fatalities."
