Statistics can help prevent work accidents

The Work Environment Service has set up a statistical database covering all work accidents over the past couple of years.

“This enables us to check correlations between various aspects of work accidents, which may help us identify the causes,” says Leivur Persson, the head of the Working Environment Service.

“We have up to now been investigating work accidents separately, but now we are able to determine common features, which we believe will be very helpful in our efforts to prevent work accidents.”

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The database includes information such as the most common type of work accident, how men and women have different kinds of accidents as well as age and education levels of people suffering accidents in the workplace.

“This data will help us target out preventive efforts much better than before,” says Persson. “Our guesswork has now turned into real research.”

According to the data collected so far, men with low levels of education are the most likely demographic to suffer work accidents. For women, it is those with a medium-level education such as a bachelor’s degree.

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The data also suggests that men typically experience work accidents in the construction and production industries, while women’s accidents tend to occur in care jobs in the health and social services.

So far, only figures from 2019 and 2020 are featured in the database, but more data is expected to be added later this year.

Read the Faroese version of this article here.

Translated by prosa.fo.

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