Looking Backwards and Forwards: 2022 in Review

The bad old days

I remember – before becoming an Arinite consultant – publishing annual reports to my employers which compared our incident statistics with national figures published by the Health & Safety Executive.  The latter invariably seemed to lag 2-3 years behind the date of my company report. I fully get that, in the days of paper reporting, it took a long time for the HSE to receive, validate, and collate reportable accident/injury/disease/dangerous occurrence reports, then have their analyses approved by the powers-that-be. The advent of online reporting has made the HSE’s -and everyone else’s - life so much simpler, that their Summary statistics for Great Britain 2022 became available even before the end of 2022! Out with the dull, old line-graphs of yesteryear, and in with helpful colour pie-charts!

2022 in review

January often seems to be a time for looking back on the year before. So, what can the HSE tell us about working conditions during 2022? Some headlines:

• 123 workers were killed in work-related accidents in 2021/22, but note:
• 13,000 deaths each year estimated to be linked to past exposures at work, primarily to chemicals or dust.
• 565,000 workers sustained a non-fatal injury in 2021/22.
• 36.8 million working days lost due to non-fatal workplace injuries.
• 100,000 workers suffered from COVID-19 in 2021/22 which they believe may have been from exposure to coronavirus at work.
• 8 million working days lost due to work-related ill health in 2021/22.
• £18.8 billion annual costs of work-related injury and new cases of ill health in 2019/20, excluding long latency illness such as cancer.

Sign of the times

Clearly, COVID, or any other pandemic for that matter, wouldn’t have featured in my corporate reports of yesteryear, however work-related stress, depression or anxiety featured significantly in 2022, with 914,000 workers suffering from the condition, resulting in the loss of 17 million working days. On the other hand:

• Slips, trips or falls on same level accounted for 30% of non-fatal injuries.
• Handling, lifting or carrying injuries accounted for 18% of non-fatal injuries.

These two bullet points, covering nearly half of non-fatal injuries, are depressingly similar to previous years’ statistics, and will be depressingly similar next year, too!

Good health next year

If you are one of those fortunate (we would say: “well-managed”) companies that enjoys a low accident rate, and you are wondering where best to target your prevention programmes, the HSE statistics point to the best return coming from:

• Promoting positive mental health
• Reducing slips/trips/falls
• Preventing musculoskeletal disorders – especially amongst homeworkers.

Arinite issues factsheets to clients giving further guidance on these, and many other topics.

Contact Us

Arinite clients worldwide appreciate we provide practical, no-nonsense advice about what you need to do to establish and maintain a safe and healthy working environment. Our team of health and safety consultants takes pride in keeping health and safety simple. If you need to call upon our expert assistance, or just for an informal chat, please call our office on 0207 947 9581, or contact us here. Jan Mirkowski