Onboarding is a critical part of any hiring process, as it allows new employees to understand company policies and procedures and how to conduct their work.
We look at a recent report from Safe Work Australia on the Key Work Health and Safety Statistics, Australia 2022 which provides an overview of the latest national data on work-related fatalities and workers’ compensation claims.
In this article we take look at the impacts of effective onboarding to minimise these health and safety risks in your organisation.
The recent investigations by Safe Work Australia have led to several interesting conclusions which emphasise the need for effective onboarding procedures. For example, there were 169 workplace fatalities in Australia in 2021. Most of these were due to impact from objects, falls, and being trapped in machinery.
Machinery operators and labourers had the highest mortality rates when sorted by occupation. There were also 130,195 serious compensation claims; mental stress and physical injuries were frequent culprits. For the latter, joint and muscle injuries (40%) and general wounds (15%) were especially prominent, again common with labourers.
A significant amount of these issues and claims might be down to human error. Still, they can also relate to avoidable or improper workplace practices, potentially due to insufficient training or onboarding. Even if this onboarding is thorough, complex procedures sometimes seem impenetrable to staff, leading to mistakes.
As machinery operators and labourers are especially susceptible to fatalities and injuries due to the physicality of their work – this suggests the need to be even more diligent and rigorous with training. Virtually all these statistics are avoidable; employers could prevent many with the right approach.
Onboarding new employees can be a time-consuming process for any organisation, primarily as it can involve introducing a range of unique policies and procedures to people unfamiliar with the organisation’s structure. There are several online onboarding tools however they can streamline the process which come with a range of benefits.
Altora’s online induction system is an example of this, providing a cost-effective and flexible online onboarding solution. The Altora platform lets you deliver customised training programs and keep training record copies via a centralised dashboard.
Altora’s online platform enables visibility and real-time tracking of workforce training and helps to streamline onboarding processes. You can also develop custom training pathways that match your needs.
The strength of your onboarding processes may determine how well employees respond to training, which could lead to avoidable injuries.
To learn more about Altora’s online platform and the ways it can strengthen your organisations’ onboarding, contact us for a free trial.
