How to use data to promote safer, healthier workplaces

For much of the population, a huge portion of our life is spent at work; but what about the data associated with all those hours completed. How can we ensure we are maintaining a high level of health and safety in the workplace?

Australia dedicates the month of October, every year to National Safe Work and Mental Health Month initiatives in order to highlight and promote safer workplaces for all. The use of data, the impacts and how to encourage best practice has been pinpointed as a core weekly topic within the awareness campaign.

How can data improve organizational safety and promote a safer workplace?

Workplace data is gathered across a range of measures including mental health assessments, hazards, incidents, audits, checklists, PPE registers, drug and alcohol testing, COR (Chain of Responsibility) and other aspects of workplace safety and compliance.

These statistics are invaluable for analysis and planning to ensure strategic measures are taken to reduce the risk of serious incidents and claims. The use of data and statistics assists with being proactive and preventative when it comes to safety and compliance issues, addressing them before they occur.

Uprise Health provides unique and detailed data on the mental health and stress levels for different organizations. This data is collected through the Wellbeing Check tool that assesses individual wellbeing and causes of workplace stress.

The Wellbeing Check tool is a set of questions that calculates an individual’s wellbeing score out of 100, relative to the population. Based on their wellbeing score, the employee is stepped up to the appropriate level of care. The Uprise Health personalized algorithm provides intelligent recommendations based on risk, needs and preferences.

Key WHS Statistics Australia

Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics in 2020 provides an overview of the latest national data on work-related fatalities and workers’ compensation claims. This includes trends, gender and age comparisons, and industry and occupation breakdowns for work health and safety and serious workers’ compensation claims in Australia. Without the use of reporting, statistics and problem areas cannot be reported on or highlighted for others.

We’ve taken some of the key statistics from the following report, work-related injury and disease – Key WHS statistics Australia 2020 report.

Serious claims statistics, 2018-19p*

Serious claims by mechanism of incident, 2018–19p*

Mental health incidents in the workplace make up 8% of serious claims, at over 9,000 claims in between 2018-19. Mental health claims are often more complex than physical claims, with longer periods of time off work and lower chances of eventual return to work (RTW).

Mental Health Week Data on American Workplaces

The Uprise Health Wellbeing in American Workplaces report surveyed over 2000 workers nationally in September. The average wellbeing score was very low at 48.4, compared to an average of 70 typically recorded in the working population. The survey also found that 23% of employees were considered at high risk for currently experiencing or developing a mental health concern.

Unfortunately, many EAP services gain around 3-4% utilization of employee counselling. This leaves 20% of employees without immediate and preventative mental health support. The Uprise EAP performs risk callbacks to any employee who scores in the ‘seek help’ category to reduce this risk to the business.

The survey also identified stressors that may be impacting an employee’s ability to work effectively. The most common stressors were feeling overloaded with work (33%), feeling frustrated with a colleague(s) (24%) or experiencing a family issue (23%). This data can be used to inform workplace wellbeing strategy at a company, to prevent stressors from becoming mental health claim hazards.

Our partnership with Donesafe showcases how data on a Health, Safety, Quality and Environmental perspective can paint a picture on being preventative when it comes to wellbeing, incidents and injuries as well as promoting a safe workplace for all. The identification of hazards, both mentally and physically, being addressed in the workplace can help to understand and reduce the number of work-related fatalities, injuries and disease.

Managing your safety and compliance via paper, spreadsheets or a combination of platforms can be extremely time consuming and disconnects your information losing the ability to report accurately. If your wellbeing and safety managers are spending more time in the office collating data, then a safety management software with real-time data functionalities could be a step in the right direction. The speed and power of turning real-time data into powerful insights can help organizations to safer working environments for all. One consolidated platform helps to reduce the time spent on reporting, administrative tasks and houses all the information with one log-in. This forms an understanding of the business overall, helps to prevent issues and removes repetitive tasks creating more time to focus on higher-value tasks.