A decade of data sharing distinguished by nine new dashboards
In 2024, we marked our first 10 years of sharing data by adding 9 new data-analytics dashboards to our online health & safety data tools.
By Michael Laycock
These tools (previously known as shared data) allow employers, workers, industry groups, and other audiences to interact with our injury-prevention data and key workplace injury statistics.
Learn about health and safety risks in your industry
The latest dashboards provide access to anonymized, summarized, industry-level statistics on:
- Wildland firefighter claims
- Heat stress claims
- Musculoskeletal (e.g., sprain and strain) injury claims
- Slip, trip, and fall claims
- Mature worker (age 55 and up) claims
- Mental disorder claims
- WorkSafeBC incident investigation reports
- Acts of violence and force
- Falls from elevation
The dashboards feature charts and graphics that are useful for research, reports, business planning, and injury-prevention training, says Rob Sturrock, manager of analytics strategy and delivery at WorkSafeBC.
“You can use these tools to identify risks in your industry, help reduce the risk of injuries in your workplace, and improve outcomes for injury prevention, disability management, and return-to-work programs,” Sturrock says.
“It’s all about awareness and education,” Sturrock adds. “The ultimate goal is to use these tools to improve health and safety in the workplace.”
Dive into data to support health and safety planning
In the “Wildland firefighters” dashboard, for example, you could pick a classification unit and a time span to find out:
- Which accident types resulted in the most claims (overexertion, falls, struck-bys, etc.)
- The most common sources of injury (people, trees, tools, etc.)
- The most common types of injury (strains, lacerations, burns, etc.)
In the “Heat stress” dashboard, you could find out the number of heat stress claims in a five- or ten-year period by occupation, age group, industry, or classification unit. You could also determine the number of claims in each year for an occupation.
The “Serious injuries” dashboard, which provides data about workplace injuries in B.C. from the last five years, has had the most views of all the dashboards, Sturrock says. It lets you filter data by industry, occupation, region, and more to identify trends and patterns.
The dashboards that provide industry insights get about half of all report views. Examples include:
- “Industry claim cost drivers,” which can give a better understanding of costs by industry
- “Industry risks,” which provides prevention data for planning workplace health and safety
WorkSafeBC launched its first data dashboard (“Serious injuries”) in 2015, so 2024 marked a decade of making important industry data available to the public. The latest dashboards were created in response to information requests from the media, government agencies, and other stakeholders, Sturrock says.
Over the years, 20 additional dashboards have gone online, and there are still more to come.
What’s next in data sharing
“Essentially, the goal for 2025 is to improve the accessibility, usability, and value of the data and analytics tools that WorkSafeBC provides to its external stakeholders,” Sturrock explains. We’ll be adding more intuitive data and visualizations to the existing dashboards.
Potential projects in 2026 and beyond may include:
- Sharing employer-level statistics, predictive analytics, and risk scores
- Integrating external data (employment trends, economic outlook, etc.) into dashboards
- Adding generative AI chatbots to dashboards to help sift through and visualize data
For more information
Try the dashboards yourself at worksafebc.com/data-insights. Under the “Data & insights” menu, select “Industry health & safety data.”
If you have ideas for new dashboards you’d like to see in the future, please let us know at our Interactive reports feedback webpage.
This information originally appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of WorkSafe Magazine. To read more or to subscribe, visit WorkSafe Magazine.
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