What Are the Most Common Workplace Safety Hazards in Victoria – and Why Do They Keep Causing Injuries?

Ask most employers what their key safety risks are and the answers are usually confident and familiar.

Manual handling.
Slips and trips.
Forklifts.
Machinery.
Stress.

None of these are new.
Yet these same hazards continue to cause serious injuries, enforcement action, and prosecutions across Victoria every year.

So the real issue is not a lack of awareness.
It’s how these risks are managed in practice.

Below are the most common workplace safety hazards seen across Victorian workplaces, and why they continue to cause harm despite being well known.

1. Manual Handling and Musculoskeletal Injuries

Manual handling injuries remain one of the most common causes of workers’ compensation claims in Victoria.

What often goes wrong is the assumption that tasks are:

• Light

• Quick

• Routine

• “Part of the job”

Over time, repetitive movements, awkward postures and cumulative loads build fatigue and injury risk, even when no single lift looks unsafe.

Common gaps include:

• Relying on training instead of redesigning the task

• Poor workstation or layout design

• No review when workloads or processes change

Effective control usually sits higher than behaviour. It involves redesigning work, changing layouts, using mechanical aids, or eliminating handling altogether where possible.

2. Slips, Trips and Falls

Slips and trips are often treated as housekeeping issues rather than safety risks.

In reality, they usually point to:

• Poor layout or storage design

• Inadequate maintenance systems

• Competing priorities where production comes first

Because these incidents feel minor, early warning signs are often ignored until a serious injury occurs.

Effective prevention focuses on how people actually move through a workplace, not how it looks on a plan.

3. Vehicle and Mobile Plant Interaction

Forklifts, trucks and mobile plant continue to be involved in serious and fatal incidents across Victorian workplaces.

A common mistake is relying on:

• High-visibility clothing

• Eye contact

• Worker awareness

These are not controls. They are behaviours, and behaviours fail under pressure.

Effective control prioritises physical separation, traffic management planning, speed control, and eliminating unnecessary interaction between people and vehicles wherever possible.

4. Machinery and Plant Hazards

Machinery injuries frequently involve equipment that has been in service for years without incident.

Typical issues include:

• Missing, damaged or bypassed guarding

• Inadequate isolation procedures

• Tasks changing without reassessing risk

The absence of past incidents is often mistaken for evidence that controls are adequate.

Plant risks need to be reviewed as work evolves, not just when equipment is new.

5. Psychosocial Hazards

Psychosocial hazards are now one of the fastest-growing areas of concern in Victorian workplaces.

These hazards include:

• Excessive or sustained workload

• Poor role clarity

• Unresolved conflict

• Inadequate support

• Exposure to aggression or distressing situations

Like physical hazards, psychosocial risks require identification, assessment and control. Individual resilience is not a control.

Why These Hazards Keep Appearing

Across inspections, investigations and advisory work, a consistent pattern emerges.

The hazards are known.
The controls exist.
But systems drift over time.

Controls become informal.
Risk assessments stop reflecting reality.
Supervision focuses on output rather than exposure.

Under the OHS Act 2004, employers must eliminate or reduce risks so far as is reasonably practicable. The fact that a hazard is “common” does not reduce that duty.

In fact, common hazards often attract closer scrutiny precisely because they are well understood.

What Inspectors Typically Ask Next

When these hazards are identified, inspectors rarely stop at whether a policy exists. They usually ask:

• How was this risk identified in this workplace?

• What controls were considered, and why were some rejected?

• How do you know the controls are effective in practice?

• When was the last time this risk assessment was reviewed?

• What changed before this incident or inspection occurred?

These questions focus on judgement, evidence and systems, not paperwork alone.

A Question Worth Asking

If these risks are so well known, which ones in your workplace are being managed by habit rather than by design?

That question alone often reveals where attention is needed.

For practical guidance and regulatory expectations in Victoria, employers should refer to resources published by WorkSafe Victoria.

Next step

If you’re confident the hazards are known but less confident that the controls would stand up to scrutiny, that gap is usually where targeted support adds the most value.