Every year, the global workforce pays a staggering and sometimes invisible price for simply showing up to work.
Nearly three million lose their lives to occupational accidents and work-related diseases, while an additional 374 million workers suffer from non-fatal occupational accidents that can alter livelihoods, families, and futures in an instant.
These are not considered isolated incidents or unavoidable risks. They are systemic, persistent, and in many cases, preventable.
According to the United Nations Global Compact, workplace-related deaths exceed the average annual deaths from road accidents (999,000), war (502,000), violence (563,000), and HIV/AIDS (312,000).
Some workplace fatalities are more prominent in certain industries — with the mining industry being one of them.
Mining is considered one of the world’s most hazardous occupations, due to workers facing chronic health risks, combined with acute physical dangers.
According to Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll 2024 Report, mining and quarrying is the sector with the third-highest prevalence of workplace harm globally.
Data shows that one in five (21%) people in mining and quarrying occupations have experienced harm at work in the past two years, third only to fishing (24%) and construction (22%).
Global Mining Guidelines Group Chairman Mark O’Brien says mining is an inherently dangerous industry, yet it plays a critical role in the global energy transition.
“As we ramp up operations to meet rising demands, safety remains our shared, unpromising priority,” O’Brien says.
“There are no competitive tensions when it comes to safety. We need to openly share knowledge, best practices, and innovative approaches to elevate safety standards across the globe.
“Every mining operation, no matter where it is located, has the responsibility to ensure that their people return home safely to their families each day.”
More to be done
Despite the importance of ensuring safety in the workplace, there is still more work that needs to be done.
Established in 2003, the International Labour Organization (ILO) observes World Day for Safety and Health at Work (28 April) in order to stress the prevention of accidents and diseases at work.
The recognition of this day is considered an integral part of the Global Strategy on Occupational Safety and Health of the ILO. One of the main focuses of the global strategy is advocacy and this specific day is considered a key tool to raise awareness of how to make work safe and healthy.
Speaking to Mining.com.au, Mario Causevic, director of Canadian healthcare provider to the mining industry MYNWELL, says this awareness day is an impactful and useful checkpoint for health and safety.
“Mining companies do put a lot of effort into safety and days like this create space to reflect — where can we improve on our health and safety,” Causevic says.
“From MYNWELL’s perspective, it’s also a big opportunity to reinforce to the workforce and to management teams that health and safety are closely linked. They link together.
“If we can have a day where we can bring that to light, it shows a lot of value. Over time, those things then tend to make a big difference in how people experience their work, what experience people have at work, and how safely operations are run.”
MYNWELL focuses on transforming health and safety in the mining industry. The company aims to strengthen the resilience of the mining workforce through proactive onsite physical and mental health support.
The organisation partners with mining companies to enhance workforce health, reduce risk, and improve operational performance through proactive, integrated healthcare solutions.
As previously reported, MYNWELL applies an ‘industrial athlete’ model, optimising workers physically and mentally to meet the demanding nature of their roles.
Across multiple mine sites in 2025, MYNWELL embedded directly into daily operations, reaching 100% of departments at every site and supporting hundreds of workers in real time.
At one site alone, 316 workers were assessed and treated for physical pain and discomfort, more than 2,100 made follow-up appointments, and 693 safety huddles were attended.
In 2025, MYNWELL teams delivered more than 78,000 minutes of treatment at a single site and more than 600 stretch sessions led at one site.
World Day for Safety and Health at Work is an awareness-raising campaign focusing international attention on the magnitude of the problem and on how promoting and creating a safety and health culture can help reduce the number of work-related deaths and injuries.
In Australia alone, there have been 30 deaths among workers this year, as of 9 April 2026. Out of those 30 deaths, five occurred in mining.
In 2025, 180 workers were killed at work in Australia, with six in the mining industry, according to Safe Work Australia’s data.
Recently, a DeltaFM employee died at Vault Minerals’ (ASX:VAU) King of the Hills site in Leonora, Western Australia, from a light vehicle incident on the site’s access road.
As previously reported, the light vehicle was travelling along a 40km per hour section of the site access road when it left the road, causing the death of the passenger. The driver also sustained minor injuries.
Internationally, more workplace deaths have occurred in the industry. In January 2026, a mine worker died at Serabi Gold’s (AIM:SRB) Coringa underground mine in Brazil.
At the beginning of 2026, at least 14 mine workers had reportedly died, with incidents occurring in Australia, Canada, Sudan, and Brazil, as this news service reported.
Turning awareness into action
While awareness days like today serve as a critical moment of reflection, the challenge for the mining sector lies in translating that awareness into consistent, measurable action.
For many operators, safety systems are well established. However, Causevic points out that the health component of health and safety is still lagging behind.
“Relying on response alone means you’re always dealing with the consequences instead of the real root causes of these incidents,” he says.
At the same time, evolving workforce structures are introducing new and less visible risks.
Speaking to Mining.com.au, Scott DeBow, Health, Safety and Environmental Director at Avetta, says increasing reliance on contractors and subcontractors is fundamentally reshaping how risk presents across mining operations.
“We have a work environment today where traditional employees are working alongside contractors, subcontractors, and temporary labour,” DeBow explains to this news service.
“They’re very close to each other physically, but the complexity comes in the relationship.”
This shift, DeBow explains, creates what he described as “risk multipliers”, where gaps in communication, role clarity, and oversight can amplify hazards.
“When I couple a decreased risk perception with an increasing risk tolerance, this is where the risk begins to multiply,” DeBow adds.
As mining operations scale and supply chains grow more complex, safety is no longer confined to a single workforce or site boundary. Instead, it extends across entire workforce ecosystems, often with varying levels of training, communication, and connection to site leadership.
DeBow says one of the industry’s biggest challenges is visibility.
“Without a strategy, the things we depend on for good work — clear communication, understanding risk — become buried,” he says.
This lack of visibility can lead to critical blind sports, particularly when it comes to understanding how work is actually performed on the group.
Both Avetta and MYNWELL point to the importance of identifying leading indicators, whether that be fatigue, mental strain, or operational risk signals, before incidents occur.
Engagement over enforcement
For DeBow, a critical shift that is underway is the move away from compliance-driven safety models and more toward a performance-based system.
“We acknowledge the importance of compliance, but we also acknowledge its limitations,” he explains.
“Supply chains are more complex. They can be fragmented without a dedicated plan and strategy to keep them connected.”
Rather than focusing solely on enforcement, he argues that engagement is the real driver of safety outcomes.
“When workers hear about enforcement, they often think of punishment and that guts engagement,” DeBow adds.
“Meaningful engagement with workers shows significantly fewer injuries and incidents alongside better quality and lower turnover.”
As previously reported, Aurelia Metals (ASX:AMI) reported a 54% improvement in total reportable incident frequency rates after partnering with Avetta to improve its compliance rates through automated systems.
Aurelia Metals increased its average role compliance for mandatory site access modules from 32% to 96%, as well as its blood lead level monitoring to 91%.
By automating processes with Avetta, the company has enhanced transparency for all stakeholders regarding site-entry requirements. It also enabled prompt notifications to the workforce about outstanding components that could impact their ability to enter worksites, minimising downtime upon arrival.
Aurelia says this led to more effective governance, increased workforce compliance, and ongoing opportunities to optimise efficiency throughout the workforce.
Culture and psychological safety
Beyond systems and processes, culture and psychological safety are defining factors in improving outcomes.
Causevic says that toughness is part of mining culture and that is not inherently negative, but when it is interpreted in a way that possibly discourages people is when it can become negative.
“When the mindset carries over into areas like fatigue, mental health, physical health, chronic pain… It can lead to people staying silent when they really shouldn’t and that is when the real risks start to increase,” he adds.
DeBow echoes this, pointing to psychosocial risk as an area the industry can no longer afford to overlook.
“We spend a lot of time focusing on physical risk, but creating a psychologically safe work environment is just as important,” DeBow says.
In complex, high-risk environments such as mining, the ability for workers to speak up can be the difference between prevention and incident.
As this news service reported in honour of R U OK? Day, suicide is the leading cause of death for working-age Australians, and the mining sector is among the hardest hit.
Lifeline Australia reports that an average of nine Australians die by suicide each day. While there is no precise figure, estimates suggest more than 54,000 Australians attempt suicide each year.
More alarming is that 75% of those who die from suicide are men aged between 40 and 59 — representing a large portion of mining’s age demographic — and above 85 years.
These statistics hit particularly hard in mining, a male-dominated workforce, where suicide rates are 80% higher than the national average, according to MATES in Mining.
World Day for Safety and Health at Work ultimately serves as a reminder and a challenge. A reminder of the scale of harm that still exists across global industries, and a challenge to move beyond awareness and more toward lasting change.
For MYNWELL, that change begins with reframing how the industry views its workforce. For Avetta, it means building systems that bring clarity to complexity and ensure no worker is left outside the safety net.
Together, these perspectives point to a broader shift underway across the mining and resources sector.
Safer operations are no longer defined solely by compliance or incident response, but by how effectively organisations can anticipate risk, engage their workforce, and act before harm occurs.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Mining.com.au, MYNWELL, Avetta & Aurelia Metals
