Safe Work Australia updates WHS data on its beta website

Safe Work Australia updates WHS data on its beta website, expanding on the platform first launched earlier this year. The organisation has rolled out new datasets and refined dashboards to help safety professionals across construction, manufacturing and healthcare access clearer insights into workplace health and safety trends.

Safe Work Australia said, "the initial release in March 2023 published dashboards for our key datasets including work-related fatalities, workers' compensation, WHS prosecutions as well as 2 industry data sets - agriculture and road transport."

"We received positive feedback from key stakeholders who performed testing of the site. Based on this feedback, improvements were made, and a range of new data is now available."

What's New on the Beta Data Website

The workers' compensation dashboard has been updated, making it more user-friendly, with additional data on occupational injuries and illnesses. These enhancements build on improvements previously introduced when Safe Work Australia enhanced its Beta Occupational Hazards Dataset, giving businesses a fuller picture of workplace hazards over time.

Key updates include:

• A refreshed workers' compensation dashboard with expanded injury and illness data
• Clearer navigation for accessing multiple datasets in one place
• A new instructional video demonstrating how to use dashboard features

New Video Guide for Navigating Dashboards

Safe Work Australia has created a new video that helps users access data in the dashboards. It walks through each dataset step by step, making it easier for safety officers and compliance teams to locate figures relevant to their industry, whether reviewing fatalities, hazards or health outcomes.

Why This Matters for Safety Professionals

Reliable, up-to-date data underpins sound risk management decisions. For technical professionals overseeing health and safety programs, having quick access to accurate workers' compensation figures and hazard trends supports better-informed policy and training decisions.

This latest update follows on from when Safe Work Australia launched its beta data website, and complements earlier work covered in our article on how Safe Work Australia updates data on work-related fatalities.

Organisations reviewing their own safety documentation may also benefit from reviewing our Safe Work Method Statements (SWMS) guide, which outlines requirements relevant to many of the hazards tracked in these dashboards.

Further information can be found here.