Understanding workers' compensation injury frequency rates

How to interpret workers' compensation injury frequency rates accurately for the purposes of assessing, measuring and reporting on your organisation's work health and safety performance.  

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The data previously published as ‘Lost Time Injury Frequency Rates’ (LTIFR) is now published in the Workers' compensation Injury Frequency Rates dashboard. You can find this data using the Claims type ‘Lost time claims’. This update was made as the term "workers’ compensation injury frequency rates" is a more accurate reflection of the data provided. The dashboard also allows users to calculate a range of rates not previously available.

Workers’ compensation injury frequency rates (WCIFR) definition

The Worker Compensation Injury Frequency Rate (WCIFR) is the number of claims per million hours worked over a given time period. They are derived from Safe Work Australia's workers' compensation data. The Workers' compensation injury frequency rates dashboard provides WCIFR by industry, occupation and claims type to help inform work health and safety (WHS) reporting.

 

WCIFR calculation example

An organisation in the building construction industry has 3,000 workers, however some workers are seasonal, part-time or casual workers. All employees are covered under workers’ compensation schemes but work different days and hours. The total hours worked over 5 financial years 2018-19 to 2022-23 for all employees was 20.0 million. There were 100 claims reported over the same time period. 

  • Number of claims from 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2023: 100 
  • Total hours worked from 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2023 (millions): 20.0 
  • The WCIFR is calculated as: 100/20.0 = 5.0 

To benchmark this rate, the company may decide to compare with the frequency rate in the building construction or the broader construction industry. The company may also want to consider its relative size compared with others in the industry (as this can affect the data in different ways), the type and severity of claims that occurred and the occupations of the workers affected.

Considerations when using WCIFR

Your organisation's context

There are a number of factors you should consider when comparing your organisation's WCIFR to benchmark values, including:

  • Your organisation's industry
  • Common occupations in your organisation, or those with high rates of work-related injury or illness.
  • Your organisation's size e.g., by number of workers, number of hours worked.
  • The type and severity of work-related injuries and illnesses recorded by your organisation.
  • The year(s) (or reporting period) you are using. For smaller organisations, we recommends calculating injury rates over a longer time period (e.g., over 5 years instead of 1 year) to reduce volatility.

Safe Work Australia’s default for reporting WCIFR benchmarks is a 5-year average and the ‘Lost time claims’ Claims type.

Safe Work Australia’s data classifies industry and occupation by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC) and Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO) respectively. You can use the search function on these pages to see how specific industries and occupations are classified. WCIFRs are available to the ANZSIC Group (3-digit) level, and Occupation benchmarks are available to the ANZSCO Unit group (4-digit) level.

Claims type

The WCIFR dashboard allows users to filter by different Claims types based on the data used for WHS reporting in your organistion.

'Lost time claims’ are used as the default Claims type for consistency with similar WHS performance measures. Lost time claims are accepted workers’ compensation claims that resulted in one day/shift or more away from work, fatality or permanent impairment. One day/shift of time lost is defined as 3 hours of time lost as per the typical minimum shift length requirements.

Hours worked

The hours worked component of the WCIFR calculation is based on estimates of jobs covered by workers’ compensation schemes in the labour force. For more information on denominators used to calculate rates, please see the Workers’ compensation About the data page.

Data limitations and reporting

The key limitation of WCIFRs is that not all work-related injuries and illnesses result in a claim for workers compensation. WCIFR is likely to be an underestimate of all lost time injuries due to some workers being ineligible for workers compensation and claims not being made for minor injuries.

The WCIFRs provided by Safe Work Australia are derived from Workers' compensation data. Data limitations and other considerations when interpreting this data can be found in the Explanatory notes on the workers' compensation data page. 

Note that values are suppressed and display as ‘NP’ (not published) when:

  • Claims counts are less than 5, due to confidentiality requirements as per our Data sharing policy.
  • Rates underpinned by an estimated total hours worked value with a Relative Standard Error (RSE) of 50% or more as they are considered unreliable.
  • Rates underpinned by an estimated total jobs count of less than 1,000 as a control measure for error in those estimates

Other ways of measuring work health and safety

WCIFR are only one indicator that should be considered when measuring and reporting on WHS. Please see the Work health and safety reporting page for more information about how to assess and measure your organisation's work health and safety performance.

Analysis of work-related injuries survey data 2021-22Data sources such as the ABS Work-Related Injuries Survey (WRIS) can be used to estimate measures such as the Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) and Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFR); however, they do not support the detailed industry and occupation breakdowns available for workers’ compensation claims data.  

The report Analysis of work-related injuries survey data 2021-22, based on the WRIS may be a useful reference if your organisation uses a TRIFR. While you will not find TRIFR in the report, the ABS data estimates the incidence of work-related injuries across industries, regardless of time lost from work or injury severity.     

Safe Work Australia does not currently provide other WHS benchmarking data such as Medical Treatment Injury Frequency Rates (MTIFR).
 

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