Each October, National Safe Work Month provides an opportunity to raise awareness of work health and safety.
This year’s theme, Safe work is for life, highlighted that work health and safety extends beyond preventing harm today. It is about protecting people’s lives and futures.
Whether you are an employer, supervisor, worker or health and safety representative, Safe Work Month encourages everyone to reflect, learn and take practical steps to prevent serious injuries and illnesses and create healthier and safer workplaces.
Why safe work is for life
In 2024, 31 workers died as a result of work-related incidents in Western Australia. The incidence rate of work-related fatalities was 1.9 for every 100,000 workers. These figures remind us how important it is to make safety a priority every day. Every worker deserves to return home safe from work, and every workplace can make a difference by talking about safety, managing risks and taking action.
Throughout October, we’ll explored four weekly focus areas:
- Week 1 (1–11 October): For life – why WHS matters
- Week 2 (12–18 October): For health – what WHS protects
- Week 3 (19–25 October): For the future – the long-term impact
- Week 4 (26–31 October): For all – action across all workplaces
Safe Work Month events
This year, we conducted three webinars as part of Safe Work Month. These events provided an opportunity to hear from expert speakers, learn about key work health and safety topics and discover practical ways to support safer workplaces.
Critical risk management webinar
Understanding and managing critical risks is essential to maintaining safe workplaces in high-risk industries.
In this webinar, our inspectors provided an overview of how these industries are regulated, the key risks they manage, and the approaches used to prevent major incidents and protect workers, communities and the environment.
Event recordings will be available soon.
Workplace exposure limits webinar
This webinar explored the transition from workplace exposure standards (WES) to workplace exposure limits (WELs), an important change for Western Australian workplaces.
Our inspectors provided an overview of the regulatory changes, explained stakeholder obligations, and outlined compliance expectations for the general and mining sectors.
Webinar recordings are now available on our YouTube channel.
Lunch and Learn session: Musculoskeletal disorders
As part of Safe Work Month, this session explored how to identify hazards, understand key risk factors, and reduce the risk of musculoskeletal injuries through effective consultation and risk management.
Event recordings will be available soon.