Safe Work Australia Month is held around Australia throughout the month of October. It is a month to encourage people to get involved in and concentrate on safety in their workplace to reduce death, injury and disease.
In 2014, the theme is Work safe. Home safe. It is a theme chosen to remind all of us that the most important reason for taking workplace safety seriously is not just about the workplace. It is about getting our workers home to family and loved ones, safe and sound, each and every day.
We can clearly see the economic cost of work-related injuries and illnesses. For the 2008-09 financial year it is estimated to be $60.6 billion dollars, representing 4.8 percent of GDP for the 2008-09 financial year. But while it is important to consider the financial cost of injury and illness, it is vital to also consider the emotional cost of these injuries and illnesses to workers and their families – and it is largely immeasurable.
The importance of workplace safety cannot be overestimated, as deaths and injuries in the workplace are preventable. They are not accidents. In workplaces it is the basics that need to be focused on. Proper guards on machines are necessities, and an injury caused by their absence is not an accident – it is negligence. The same can be said for reverse alarms on mobile plant equipment, adequate lighting around work sites or adequate signage for visitors and workers.
The best way to communicate improved safety is to make actual improvements in the workplace and in the work process. Real change is the most powerful form of communication. STA Traffic Management Solutions is a business that is all about managing risk and keeping people safe where there is involvement in traffic management in Victoria.
Like so many other businesses and organisations across Australia, STA Traffic are committed to ensuring safe Victoria traffic management solutions that fully comply with Government and industry safety standards, for those working or visiting on-site and those pedestrians or drivers who are diverted by any traffic control services that are in place in and around work sites.