There were 10 injuries at Central Coast Council from July 1-September 24, 2023, resulting in 863 hours lost.
This equated to an average of more than two weeks off work before each worker returned to suitable duties.
Another 323 workplace health and safety “occurrences” were reported for the same period, the first quarter of this financial year.
Of those “occurrences” 106 were identified as requiring further information and were investigated by the organisation.
The numbers were reported to the December meeting of the Audit, Risk and Improvement Committee.
In previous meetings, the committee has recommended the engagement of an exercise physiologist to ensure a preventative approach for an ageing workforce.
The committee also said it would like to see a graph of near misses to see if there was a trend happening and what was being done.
However, the full report to the committee was confidential.
The number of injuries is half what it was at the same time last year, in quarter one of 2022-23 financial year.
In Q1 last year Council reported 20 Lost Time Injuries year to date.
By June 2023, there were 29 workers on “suitable” duties, compared to 24 on suitable duties at the end of September 2023, with five workers returning to pre-injury duties.
Council said the nature and severity of injuries appear not to be increasing but workers seem to be more likely to take time off and for a longer duration.
In the previous five years Council has logged: 59 lost time injuries losing 8,317 hours in 2018-19; 60 lost time injuries losing 11,490 hours in 2019-20; 80 lost time injuries losing 14,480 hours in 2020-21; 55 lost time injuries losing 7,945 hours in 2021-22; and 63 lost time injuries losing 12,198 hours in 2022-23.
According to the annual report, at the end of June 2023, Council employed 2250 people or 172.57 full time equivalents of whom: 1753 were permanent; 66 were temporary; 406 were casual; 12 were trainees; and 13 were apprentices.
But the same report shows the total number of people who performed paid work for Council on the nominated date of November 23, 2022, was 1653 people: 1,322 Permanent full-time; 184 Permanent part-time; 89 Casual basis; 49 Fixed-term contract; 9 Senior staff members; and 77 people engaged under a contract or other arrangement.
Employee turnover was 10.13 per cent.
Using the Safe Work Australia Local Government benchmark, Council’s LTIFR (lost time injury frequency rate) at the end of Q1 was 13.15 which is .05 below the benchmark of 13.2.
For the same period last year the LTIFR was 27.14.
The LTIFR is calculated by the number of people who have lost time from work for one shift or more divided by the total hours worked by all council employees over the period.
It is multiplied by 1,000,000 to give the rate.
The departments where the occurrences occurred that were investigated are: Community and Recreational Services, 29; Corporate Services, 11; Environment and Planning, 16; Infrastructure Services, 27; and Water and Sewer, 23.
Merilyn Vale