Staff injuries that resulted in lost work time are this year half what they were for the first quarter of the financial year last year.
There were 10 employee injuries at Council-under-administration from July 1 – September 24 this year that resulted in 863 work hours lost.
This equated to an average of more than 2 weeks off work before each worker returned to suitable duties.
In Q1 last year Council reported 20 Lost Time Injuries year to date.
In the last five years the injuries have been as follows:
59 lost time injuries losing 8,317 hours in 2018-19
60 lost time injuries losing 11,490 hours in 2019-20
80 lost time injuries losing 14,480 hours in 2020-21
55 lost time injuries losing 7,945 hours in 2021-22
63 lost time injuries losing 12,198 hours in 2022-23.
Another 323 work place health and safety “occurrences” were reported for the first quarter of the 2023-24 financial year.
Of those “occurrences” 106 were identified as requiring further information and were investigated by the council.
The numbers were reported to the December meeting of the Audit, Risk and Improvement Committee.
In previous meetings, the committee has recommended the engagement of an exercise physiologist to ensure a preventative approach for an ageing workforce.
The committee also said it would like to see a graph of near misses to see if there was a trend happening and what was being done.
However, the full report to the committee was confidential.
By September 2023, there were 24 workers on “suitable” duties, compared to 29 on suitable duties at the end of June 2023, with 5 workers returning to pre-injury duties.
Council said the nature and severity of injuries appear NOT to be increasing but workers seem to be more likely to take time off and for a longer duration.
According to the annual report, at the end of June 2023, Council employed 2250 people or 172.57 full time equivalents.
1753 were permanent;
66 were temporary;
406 were casual;
12 were trainees and
13 apprentices.
But the same report shows the total number of people who performed paid work for Council on the nominated date of 23 November 2022 was 1653 people.
1,322 Permanent full-time;
184 Permanent part-time;
89 Casual basis;
49 Fixed-term contract;
9 Senior staff members and
77 people engaged under a contract or other arrangement.
Employee turnover was 10.13 per cent.
Using the Safe Work Australia Local Government benchmark, Council’s LTIFR (lost time injury frequency rate) at the end of Q1 2023-24 was 13.15 which is .05 below the benchmark of 13.2.
For the same period last year the LTIFR was 27.14.
The LTIFR is calculated by the number of people who have lost time from work for one shift or more divided by the total hours worked by all council employees over the period.
It is multiplied by 1,000,000 to give the rate.
The departments where the “occurrences” were investigated were:
Community and Recreational Services; 29
Corporate Services; 11
Environment and Planning; 16
Infrastructure Services; 27
Water and Sewer; 23.
