From Compliance to Competitive Advantage: Do You Actually Have a Safety Strategy?
Are You Running a Safety Strategy or Just Holding a Folder of Policies?
Too often, we confuse having documents with having direction. Policies, procedures, and a dusty risk register do not make a strategy. A real safety strategy begins with a clear diagnosis of the problems that are most likely to cause harm in your workplace.
This post draws on the strategic principles of Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy Bad Strategy, recent data from WorkSafe Victoria and Safe Work Australia, and the legal duty in Victoria to eliminate or reduce risks so far as is reasonably practicable (SFAIRP).
What Does the Data Say?
Work-related harm isn’t random. In 2023–24, WorkSafe Victoria issued 13,943 improvement notices, a 28% increase. And nationally, more than 139,000 serious claims were made across Australian workplaces.
The most common causes of serious harm are not new:
Body stressing (manual handling) – 32.7% of serious claims
Falls, slips and trips – 21.8%
Being hit by moving objects – 15.8%
Mental stress – 10%, with the longest average time off (38.1 weeks) and highest compensation per claim ($67,400)
These four mechanisms alone make up over 80% of all serious claims. If your operations involve physical work, machinery, mobile plant, or tight schedules, these risks apply to you.
The Most Affected Industries
Six industry sectors accounted for more than 60% of all serious claims in Australia:
Health care and social assistance (19.1%)
Construction (12.0%)
Manufacturing (10.0%)
Public administration and safety (9.8%)
Transport, postal and warehousing (7.3%)
Agriculture, forestry and fishing (2.7%, but highest claim frequency rate at 20.9)
This alignment with high-risk tasks and high-frequency claims presents a clear starting point: know your exposures.
Are You Managing or Just Reacting?
A strong safety strategy is not about chasing every risk equally. It starts with understanding your operating context, identifying your critical exposures, and developing practical systems to:
Prioritise known high-risk activities
Set clear, guiding policies (e.g. "no unguarded plant" or "consultation must drive improvement")
Drive coherent action, led by data (e.g. injury claims, near misses, and site-specific observations)
This is not "beyond compliance". Compliance with the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 means applying controls that are SFAIRP. That means the highest level of control that is reasonably practicable to implement, not the easiest or cheapest.
WorkSafe Victoria’s 2025 Strategy: A Clear Signal
WorkSafe Victoria has set measurable goals to reduce harm across the state:
30% reduction in workplace fatalities
20% reduction in injury claims
10% improvement in return-to-work outcomes
To support these goals, WorkSafe is increasing its focus on high-risk industries, common causes of serious harm, and the practical application of SFAIRP principles. Employers can expect more inspections, stronger enforcement, and an emphasis on demonstrable systems that manage real-world risks.
Having a clear, risk-based strategy is not optional. It is central to meeting your obligations and protecting your business from escalating costs and compliance pressure.
Why It Matters: Time, Cost and Stability
Work-related injuries have a ripple effect. In 2022–23:
The median time lost across all claims was 7.2 weeks
Serious psychological claims led to over 38 weeks off work
75% of long-term absences (13+ weeks) made up over 75% of compensation costs
Each unresolved hazard not only affects safety but disrupts productivity and drains financial resources. And with enforcement increasing under WorkSafe Victoria’s 2025 Strategy, employers are under more scrutiny to show a clear line of sight between risk and control.
So, Ask Yourself:
Do you know what types of injuries your business is most exposed to?
Can you link your safety procedures to the actual risks present in your workplace?
Are your consultation, reporting, and incident systems helping you adjust your controls?
Have you prioritised where to act first, based on risk and business impact?
If you answered "not sure" to any of these, you may not have a strategy. Yet.
What to Do Next
Start with the problem. Diagnose the exposures that most affect your people. Then:
Build or review your consultation process
Make sure your hazard and near miss reporting systems actually lead to action
Use WorkCover claims, incident logs, and employee feedback to refine your priorities
From there, structure your safety efforts into a coherent direction that aligns with your broader business objectives. That’s strategy. And that’s where safety starts becoming a competitive advantage, not just a compliance task.
What Makes a Strategy Good?
As Richard Rumelt outlines in Good Strategy Bad Strategy, a real strategy does three things:
Diagnoses a critical problem
Sets a guiding policy
Leads to coherent action
In the context of workplace health and safety, this means clearly identifying your highest risks, setting practical principles to guide decision-making (such as "we don't operate forklifts near pedestrians"), and embedding actions that directly reduce those risks - aligned with your legal duties under the OHS Act.
A strategy like this doesn’t just respond to incidents. It prevents them. And it integrates safety into the way the business operates.
What Makes a Strategy Bad?
Rumelt also explains what makes a strategy ineffective:
Mistaking goals for strategy (e.g. "zero harm" without a plan to achieve it)
Failing to define the problem clearly
Trying to address everything equally instead of focusing on the most critical risks
In safety, a bad strategy often looks like a folder of generic policies, scattered actions, or reactive compliance. It creates the illusion of control but leaves real exposures unmanaged.
Ready to Take the Next Step?
If you're looking to move beyond generic advice and want to explore real-life, risk control solutions tailored to your workplace, we can help.
Get in touch to discuss how we support Victorian businesses with practical, SFAIRP-aligned strategies that deliver operational and safety outcomes.
