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Using Realistic WHS Targets & Consultation for a Safe & Healthy Workplace

SafeWork NSW is successfully reducing the number of fatalities, serious injuries and illnesses using the strategy that is set out in the Work Health & Safety Roadmap for NSW 2022. They had to revise the Roadmap in October 2018 because they had already achieved targets they had set for 2022.

Perhaps there is something in the strategy used by Safe Work that you could adopt to help reduce injuries or illnesses in your workplace.

As explained in October 2018 by the NSW Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation:

  • The Roadmap “is a six-year strategy aligned to the Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy, committed to by the NSW Government in 2012.”

  • The Roadmap “commits NSW to nationally agreed targets of a 20 per cent reduction in work related fatalities and a 30 per cent reduction in the incidence of serious injuries, illnesses and musculoskeletal injuries and illnesses, by 2022.”

  • “ .. both fatalities and serious injuries and illnesses show NSW has already met and exceeded the targets in advance of 2022. In the last decade there has been a 28 per cent reduction in work related fatalities from 86 to 62 in 2017 and a 24.6 per cent reduction in serious injury and illnesses”.

  • “SafeWork NSW has now set higher state targets to achieve even greater reductions for fatalities and serious injuries. By 2022, the new NSW targets aim to achieve a 30 per cent decline in work related fatalities and a 50 per cent decline for serious injuries and illnesses”.

The beauty of the Roadmap is that it is based on realistic targets aimed at agreed priorities after consultation with stakeholders and then working with and assisting stakeholders to achieve the results of a shared vision of healthy, safe and productive lives. It’s a successful formula that could be applied in any workplace.

You can download a copy of the Roadmap from SafeWork NSW’s website at this url,

https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/roadmap#intro

SafeWork NSW also publishes a Quarterly Status Report with the statistics of progress on their safety targets.

9th October 2019

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