HSE’s latest figures show the real cost of workplace injury
The Health and Safety Executive has released the 2024/25 statistics. They always make for a sobering read, but I often think that the message gets lost behind big numbers that don’t have context.
What do I take from it?
What really stands out to me is the discrepancy between RIDDOR and self-reported workplace injuries. Are we really getting a true picture? We talked about this discrepancy earlier in the year with regards to bin lift injuries. If we don’t know about the near misses and minor injuries, we’ll never stop the fatalities.
Are less than 10% of workplace injuries reported?
The Labour Force Survey records 680,000 people injured at work during the year. That’s 2% of the working population. But RIDDOR reports 59,219 injuries. This shows just how much day-to-day harm never enters the formal system. When incidents are missed or left unreported, we can’t learn from them.
The impact of lost time on other workers
Work-related injury and illness led to 40.1 million working days lost. For employers, this means reduced capacity, and delays that are hard to absorb. But it also means pressure on the people still working to ‘plug the gap’.
The financial burden
The estimated cost of injuries and ill health reached £22.9 billion in 2023/24.
And at a time when every business is feeling the financial pressure of the economy, we can’t afford to lose even a penny. Let alone billions of pounds.
Safety should be built into everything you do
These figures are a prompt to check existing controls with a critical eye.
- Are risk assessments up to date, used, known by employees and not just left in a drawer?
- Are you doing regular practical training? I heard recently that training has a ‘half-life’ so we mustn’t just train and forget. Regular refreshers are vital.
- Do you have an open reporting culture? Workers need the confidence to flag concerns, and the reassurance that they’ll be heard. One council we spoke to changed the way near misses were reported and saw a huge leap in reports. Sometimes it’s a simple change you hadn’t considered before.
We’ve seen the real positive impact on sites when the whole culture shifts to a focus on safety. Just look at our 12-year journey with FCC Environment, who have safety at the centre of everything they do.
