National Safe Work Month 2026: Safe work is for life

National Safe Work Month begins today, 1 October. This year’s theme, Safe work is for life, recognises that workplace safety reaches beyond the working day. It is about coming home safely, being well enough to enjoy life and having a future to look forward to.

For Shattered, this connects with the question at the centre of our documentary series: When work changes a life, what happens next?

Preventing injury is essential. Safety is everyone’s business, and keeping people safe requires ongoing attention, genuine listening and a willingness to act on concerns.

Sadly, harm still occurs. When someone is injured, that same commitment to their wellbeing needs to continue.

How we respond can help a person feel supported through an uncertain time: listening with care, keeping in touch in ways that work for them, explaining what happens next and working together towards a safe pathway forward.

The person is still our colleague. Their wellbeing remains a shared concern.

The figures behind the campaign

Safe Work Australia’s 2026 campaign kit highlights:

• 188 workers died from work-related traumatic injuries in 2024.

• 146,700 serious workers’ compensation claims were recorded in 2023–24, based on provisional data.

• That represents more than 400 serious claims a day, averaged across the year.

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Serious claims involve at least one week of working time lost. These figures describe recorded compensation claims and traumatic injury fatalities; they are not a count of all work-related harm.

Behind each claim is a person whose daily life has been interrupted. There may be treatment appointments, uncertainty about income, changes in family responsibilities and questions about whether returning to the same workplace is possible.

A workplace injury can also bring losses that are difficult to describe: confidence, independence, professional identity, routine or a sense of belonging. Understanding these experiences gives workplaces a fuller picture of what recovery can involve.

Psychological injury belongs in the safety conversation

Safe Work Australia’s Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025 reports that mental health conditions accounted for 12% of serious workers’ compensation claims in 2023–24.

For claims from 2022–23, the median working time lost was 35.7 weeks for mental health conditions, compared with 7.4 weeks across all serious claims. These are claim statistics, rather than a prediction of any individual’s recovery.

Psychosocial safety requires attention to the conditions in which people work. Filming Shattered, we also identified conditions in which people recover after an injury has occured. That must also be an improtant part of the national conversation.

Safe Work Australia identifies hazards including excessive job demands, poor support, low job control, bullying, violence and aggression, and poor organisational change management. Hazards can interact, increasing the risk of harm.

An October conversation can therefore begin with a practical question: What aspects of our work could cause harm, and what needs to change?

Keep the person connected after injury

For someone who is away from work, contact with their workplace can become dominated by forms, certificates and decisions. A useful question for employers is whether the person also has a clear, respectful way to remain connected.

Comcare’s guidance identifies fair treatment, responsive managers, genuine concern and appropriate adjustments as important elements of supporting return to work.

Employers cannot control every treatment or compensation decision. They can examine their own communication, workplace relationships and the work they can realistically offer. (Shattered tip - please don't retreat to written communication all the time - while important to document details - remember cognition can be impaired during a psychological injury and a quick caring phone call to inquire how someone is doing and stay connected can make all the difference. People remember how you made them feel.)

Being assessed as having capacity to work does not, by itself, create a suitable job. Capacity is not opportunity. A return-to-work conversation needs to consider the actual duties, environment, support and adjustments available to the person.

Turn October conversations into action

The campaign kit sets out four weekly focus areas: For life, For health, For the future and For all. These offer a starting point for discussions about prevention and the longer consequences of workplace harm.

For workplaces, we suggest using those discussions to:

• Listen to workers. Ask where they encounter risks and what makes raising concerns difficult.

• Review work design. Examine workloads, support, role clarity and how change is communicated.

• Check the response after injury. Consider whether an injured person knows whom to contact and receives clear explanations.

• Examine suitable work. Discuss real duties and adjustments with the worker and relevant professionals.

• Follow through. Assign responsibility for agreed improvements and review progress beyond October.

These are also useful questions to bring to a Shattered workplace screening. The series brings injured people, families, clinicians and others into a shared conversation about care, recovery and responsibility.

This National Safe Work Month, we invite workplaces to consider both how they prevent harm and how they respond when a person’s life has already changed.

What would someone injured in your workplace experience next—and what could you improve?

Explore Shattered and enquire about hosting a workplace screening at shattereddoco.com.