Reducing electrical injuries in Australian workplaces

A research team from Monash University is recommending better electrical hazards training in order to reduce the number of electrical injuries in Australian workplaces.

More than 400 serious claims are made in Australia each year due to electric shocks at work, and electrical contact consistently ranks among the top 10 causes of occupational fatality.

Lead researcher Dr Dee Tomic, from the Monash Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health at the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, analysed data from four Victorian sources: coroner-reported deaths, emergency department presentations, hospital admissions and workers compensation claims between 2018 and 2024.

The resulting study aims to inform targeted prevention and policy development.

When compared by industry, manufacturing workers topped the list of accepted workplace compensation claims lodged for electrical injuries in Victoria between 2018–19 and 2022–23, accounting for 21.4% of the 285 claims. Construction, which includes electrical services, came next, with 16.1% of these claims.

By occupation, electrotechnology and telecommunications trades workers lodged the most electrical injury claims at 16.5%, followed closely by labourers such as freight handlers and shelf fillers at 13%. Other occupations near the top of the list included construction trades workers (7.4%), cleaners and laundry workers (4.6%), and health and welfare support workers (4.6%).

Tomic said the findings showed many of those affected had likely never been trained to work around electricity.

“There is an assumption that electrical injury is an electrician’s problem, but a large share of these injuries are happening to workers who have most likely never been trained to work around electricity,” she explained. “Electricians are exposed more often, but they also work within stricter safety systems.

“Other workers may encounter live electrical equipment unpredictably and without that protection, which really highlights the need for improved training to prevent further injury.”

Work-related electrical injuries accounted for 2516 emergency department presentations and 313 hospital admissions in Victoria between 2018–19 and 2023–24, the study found. Workers aged 15 to 24 years had the highest emergency department presentation rate at 21.6 per 100,000 workers, and men accounted for 81.7% of emergency department presentations for electrical injuries.

However, Tomic said that the figures are likely to underestimate the true burden, as none of the administrative datasets used were designed to capture electrical injury specifically, so cases may be missed where the injury was not correctly attributed.

The four data sources are also unlinked, meaning the same worker may appear in more than one dataset and the counts cannot be added together.

“Linking these data sources, and capturing the circumstances in which each injury occurs, would give us a much clearer picture of where safety systems are breaking down,” Tomic said.

Tomic is advocating for targeted safety induction for young and early-career workers, as well as extending electrical-hazard awareness training into industries that are not traditionally seen as high-risk. She is also calling for better follow-up after injury.

“While electrical injuries are less common than many other workplace injuries, they are associated with disproportionately severe outcomes, including burns, cardiac and neurological complications, and death,” she said.

Almost all workplace electrical injuries were preventable, Tomic said. “Workplace safety regulators and policymakers must do better by those who work around live electrical equipment.”

Adjunct Professor Terry Slevin, Public Health Association of Australia Chief Executive Officer, welcomed the research and echoed the need for training reform.

“This data is unlikely to be unique to Victoria and highlights a national problem,” Slevin said. “Everyone has the right to expect to come home safe and healthy at the end of the work day and Australia must do more to prevent workplace injuries.

“An expansion of the reach of training on working safely around electricity must be a priority across all industries, including those not traditionally seen as high-risk.”

The research was published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health and can be read at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anzjph.2026.100586.

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