Spotlight on work safety risk by occupation

Occupational heat maps provide a visual representation of relative risk across occupations, with Workplace Health and Safety Queensland just publishing a report comparing jobs across the state.

Construction and mining industry jobs feature in the new heat maps, showing labouring was the worst performing occupation, also deteriorating since 2016.

The heat maps are based on the concept of the harm index which is a ratio of total statutory costs (an indicator of severity) and exposure (i.e. workers covered) to give an assessment of risk, which represents the relative harm workers are likely to sustain during their working lives.

The occupational heat maps were generated using on-duty at place of work finalised workers’ compensation claims only. Harm index analysis revealed the occupation groups with the highest index levels were:

• labourers
• machinery operators and drivers
• technicians and trades workers
• community and personal services workers.

These four occupation groups represent half of the eight categories, yet their claim numbers account for 79 per cent of claims. It is a similar result for statutory payments, with these four occupation groups accounting for 80 per cent of the total. Further, the first three groups were responsible for approximately two thirds of all claims and statutory payments.

More information

All the details are at www.worksafe.qld.gov.au