Appendix D: Work, health and safety (WHS)
This appendix outlines our WHS performance in accordance with the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (WHS Act).
Our WHS commitment
We are committed to maintaining the highest possible standard of health and safety for everyone who enters our workplace, whether an office, a construction site or one of the properties in our portfolio. This is reflected in our WHS strategy, policies, our Prevention First management system and our QMS framework.
Initiatives
In 2015–16, we undertook the following activities to deliver on our WHS vision:
- established a new three-year strategy seeking to build WHS capability and passion at all levels
- introduced a three-year psychosocial wellbeing strategy to facilitate greater mental health awareness, capability and early intervention across the business
- recertified against Australian and international standards for both our Prevention First management system and our QMS
- launched a Prevention First mandatory refresher training module for all staff
- promoted the incident reporting program to support a 'just' safety culture and enable analysis of data to shape prevention initiatives.
Safety audits and inspections
As part of our regular WHS monitoring program, we undertook 967 contractor and internal audits and 81 office inspections during 2015–16. A total of 865 corrective actions were raised following audits. The results of the corrective actions have assisted in various initiatives including issuing safety alerts, targeted audit campaigns and local area risk mitigation.
Through our annual surveillance audit, the WHS certification licensor provided positive feedback on the program, recognising the continual improvements we have made since 2014 and the positive steps we are taking in our current three-year WHS strategy.
Notifiable incidents
A total of 426 incidents were reported in 2015–16, with 177 deemed as WHS incidents following assessment. Of the other 249 incidents reported, nine were security issues and separately managed and 240 were not WHS related (in that DHA was not deemed to be a causative factor).
As shown in Figure 17, staff were involved in the highest number of WHS incidents (86), however nil were notifiable to Comcare in line with the WHS Act. Nine of the 68 incidents involving contractors were reported to a WHS regulator. Of these, eight were classified as dangerous incidents (fires, striking of gas mains and a partial wall collapse) but no immediate medical treatment was needed. The remaining one incident was notifiable due to both incident type (fall from height) and injury type (serious laceration).
As shown in Figure 18, there has been an increase in the number of all incidents reported year-on-year. This relates to a 280.0 per cent increase in the number of all incidents reported to DHA since the commencement of the Prevention First system in early 2014. This is attributed to improved visibility, a just safety culture (one where incident reporting is encouraged) and the inclusion of tenant-related incidents.
The increase in WHS incident reporting contributed to a staff lost time injury frequency rate of 3.4 (four lost time injuries) and a total recordable incident frequency rate (TRIFR)17 of 10.3 (12 injuries requiring medical treatment). Since the implementation of the Prevention First system, there has been a 40.0 per cent reduction in the TRIFR contributing to DHA overachieving our original goal of reducing the TRIFR by 20.0 per cent over two years.
Figure 17: All WHS incidents by person involved, 30 June 2016
Figure 18 History of staff WHS incidents, 30 June 2016
Workers' compensation
Comcare accepted 10 workers' compensation claims in 2015–16, including three claims for injuries that occurred in previous financial years. For the compensable injuries in 2015–16, one claim was for a psychological injury and the remaining were for musculoskeletal injuries.
Comcare premium
Our 2015–16 workers' compensation premium was 1.4 per cent of our total payroll. Comcare has estimated our 2016–17 premium as 0.9 per cent of our total payroll. This included a bonus being deducted in recognition of our decreased claims history in recent years and improvements in fund performance.
17 Number of recordable injuries per million work hours
