Summary
One of Australia’s largest mining and construction companies demonstrated that employees identified as ‘high risk’ on a 10 minute online work safety assessment were nearly 5 times more likely to be injured at work than ‘low risk’ employees.
Business Problem
In order to justify the roll out of comprehensive pre-employment safety screening for some of Australia’s largest infrastructure and mining projects, this company needed to confirm the validity of the Onetest Work Safety Assessment (OWSA) using current employees in order to estimate the potential Return on Investment (ROI).
112 current employees completed the OWSA and were categorised into three groups:
- High Risk – safety scores in the bottom 20th percentile
- Average Risk – safety scores between 21st and 79th percentile
- Low Risk – safety scores equal to or above the 80th percentile.
The safety records of individuals in these groups were analysed and it was found that, compared to ‘low risk’ employees, ‘high risk’ employees experienced approximately:
- 3 times more work accidents (e.g. falls, vehicular accidents, spills, etc.)
- 4 times as many injuries at work that required medical treatment (MTIs)
- 5 times as many injuries at work that prevented them from working for a complete day or shift (LTIs).
Business Implications
Given that the average cost of a workplace injury in Australia is $10,000, this company easily demonstrated ROI by calculating that ‘high risk’ individuals would cause up to 5 times more injuries than ‘low risk’ individuals.
This company now uses the Onetest Work Safety Assessment (OWSA) to stop ‘high risk’ people from entering some of Australia’s largest infrastructure and mining projects in order to reduce workplace safety incidents and improve profitability.
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