Australia Observes National Safe Work Month

This October, Safe Work Australia is asking working Australians to observe National Safe Work Month. The annual campaign encourages workers and employers to pay attention to safety issues in the workplace and to implement mitigating solutions. This year’s theme is “A Moment is All it Takes” - that it can take just a moment each day to identify safety hazards and prevent workplace accidents.

Safe Work Australia has published a checklist to guide companies through National Safe Work Month. The checklist includes a number of ways to spread safety awareness, including adding a workplace safety awareness reference to employee signatures, downloading and posting safety flyers in the workplace, running a workplace safety improvement activity, posting safety-related thoughts and experiences to company social media using #MySafetyMoment, and more.

Since Safe Work Australia was founded in 2008 to develop national policy and guidance for workplace health and safety and workers’ compensation, there has been a steady decline in the rate of work-related fatalities and workers’ compensation claims. However workplace injuries and illnesses continue to cost the Australian economy dozens of billions of dollars each year, so there is still much work to be done.