This section is presented in accordance with the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (WHS Act).
Executive commitment to work health and safety
Our Board and Executive continued their commitment to work health and safety (WHS) throughout the year. The good health and wellbeing of our people remains essential to our success. Our focus has been on minimising risk exposure, guided by the Board’s Risk Appetite Statement, through targeted risk reduction initiatives. In doing so, we continue to focus on protecting the physical health of our people while supporting mental health through a psychosocial risk-management approach.
Work health and safety
We have progressed our Safety Improvement Strategy, which is structured around 4 strategic pillars: Proactive Leadership, Enabled through Effective Systems, Confidence in Our Controls and Continuous Learning.
Key initiatives commenced include Critical Control Management, Leading for Safety, Contractor Management, and Occurrence Management. These programs demonstrate our ongoing dedication to ensuring the health and safety of our workforce and our commitment to maintaining a safe and supportive work environment.
The above initiatives, coupled with focused risk reduction programs such as electrical safety, driving safety and the health and wellbeing of our people, are designed to ensure and enhance the robustness of our risk controls, as well as reduce the frequency and severities of injuries.
Electrical safety
We have continued to address electrical safety risks through commencing a multi-year electrical safety switchboard replacement program, which will replace aging switchboards and mitigate arc-flash risks through safety-in-design improvements. Electrical safety has been chosen as the first risk to develop a critical control management bowtie to ensure the right controls are in place to manage this risk.
Driving and vehicle safety
Driving continued to be a key risk, especially in remote areas. To improve our controls, we conducted an independent review of our processes and controls to identify opportunities to further reduce driving-related risks.
Health and wellbeing of our people
The core focus throughout 2023–24 was the development and embedding of the Psychosocial Risk Improvement Program (PRIP) in response to recent changes in our legislative and regulatory environment (refer to regulations 55A to 55D, WHS Act). The program takes a data-driven and consultative approach to identifying current and emerging psychosocial hazards and risks, providing a mechanism for a system-level review of our workplace practices to identify improvement actions. The systems-based approach ensures better practice in managing psychosocial risk.
The PRIP differs from other organisational strategies for psychosocial risk management in its holistic and collaborative approach to complex problem- solving. Adopting a shared accountability framework facilitated by our ‘One Airservices’ philosophy, the program acknowledges the activities conducted across functions, and cohesively maps and evaluates them to assess their overall effectiveness in protecting the workforce from work-related psychological or physical harm. Since program commencement, 58 corrective actions have been generated: 18 targeted to improve the program and 40 systemic actions aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of our psychosocial risk controls.
Mental health first aid
Focus continued with our Mental Health First Aid program, with internal instructors now trained to upskill our workforce. The peer assistance network (PAN) has been further embedded, with efforts to proactively integrate these mental health initiatives into our Safety Management System, including integration of PAN into drug and alcohol management processes and occurrence management.
Targeted injury risk reduction
Our body stress risk injuries remain a focus for our aviation rescue fire fighters. We implemented specific programs to assist our physical training instructors in supporting front-line crews, focusing on aerobic conditioning, mobility, stability, and strength and conditioning.
We also finalised a Physical Safety Standard for implementation in 2024–25. This industry-leading standard aims to protect the safety of our fire fighting workforce, supported by health and wellbeing programs, to ensure the ongoing operational safety and resilience of our ARFF workforce.
Work health and safety reporting
Our total recordable injury frequency rate (TRIFR) was 10.4 for the year ended June 2024. We have continued to focus on reducing the number and severity of injuries to our people, prioritising their wellbeing through targeted hazard and risk reduction activities. Compared with the previous financial year, there was an increase in the number of injuries (occurrences) reported with people accessing early intervention schemes. Reporting to Comcare increased slightly from the previous year but remains low overall. There were no fatalities in the 2023–24 reporting period.
For 2024–25, we have amended our total recordable injury frequency rate (TRIFR) to align with Safework Australia guidance on safety reporting. This includes reporting of occupational disease outside of this metric.
To improve our reporting culture, we commenced a transition to new reporting software that will be simpler, more intuitive, and mobile-device enabled. This will create an opportunity to refresh our behavioural approach to observations, hazards, and occurrences, generating greater insights into our safety performance.
Consultation and health and safety committees
Local Health and Safety Committee meetings were held in Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Perth (on behalf of WA, a state-based committee), and Melbourne to proactively consult and resolve local work health and safety opportunities and issues at those sites.
The national Health and Safety Committee for ARFF is now in place to address health and safety matters affecting our fire fighters at a national level. It provides an additional avenue for our people to raise, review, and consult on national solutions for safety-related opportunities and issues.
Workers’ compensation premium
Our Comcare premium for 2024–25 has increased from 0.91% of payroll to 1.35%, which is above the Commonwealth scheme average of 0.95% (up from 0.84%). This increase is due to our increased claim numbers in disease-based claims rather than injury. Awareness of presumptive legislation for employees (including former employees) exposed to hazardous materials and entitlement to lodge claims for cancers from fire fighters, has led to an increase in such claim numbers. Comcare enacted presumptive legislation for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) late in 2023, resulting in additional mental health claims.
Improvement notices and Comcare investigations
During 2023-24, we received no improvement notices and were not the subject of any investigations.
Table 12: Work health and safety occurrences and hazards 2019–20 to 2023–24
| Incident category | 2019-20 | 2020–21 | 2021–22 | 2022–23 | 2023–24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reported work-related WHS occurrences | 167 | 142 | 160 | 195 | 242 |
| Reported work-related WHS hazards | 1,203 | 552 | 413 | 404 | 415 |
| Workplace fatality | 0 | 0 | 0 | 14 | 0 |
| Serious injury or illness requiring Comcare notification | 1 | 31 | 31 | 1 | 1 |
| Dangerous incidents requiring Comcare notification | 8 | 10 | 53 | 0 | 25 |
- One report recoded to non-dangerous incident based on further information received.
- One report notification was for workplace transmission of COVID-19 in NSW.
- One dangerous incident did not arise out of the conduct of Airservices business, however, was required to be reported under cross-jurisdiction obligations.
- The death in 2022–23 was an external candidate (i.e. not an Airservices employee) who suffered a heart attack while undertaking a physical aptitude test during recruitment activity.
- One dangerous incident was reported to Comcare and subsequently determined not to have met the criteria under the WHS Act.