Workplace Fatalities: Understanding the Family Impact and Communicating Better

About this Webinar

When a workplace fatality happens, the ripple effects reach far beyond the incident report. A family loses someone. Colleagues carry the weight of it. And an organisation is left facing a hard question: did we do right by the people left behind?

This session is grounded in an evidence-based review conducted through the Centre for Construction Safety and Wellbeing at the University of Newcastle, examining how families are affected by workplace fatalities, and how organisations respond in the aftermath.

Kurt Warren draws on over 25 years leading health, safety, and risk across high-consequence environments, including construction, infrastructure, aviation, nuclear, defence, utilities, and rail, to unpack what the research reveals, and what it means in practice.

He'll explore where current industry responses fall short, what trauma-informed support genuinely looks like, and how organisations can turn hard lessons into real prevention, not just paperwork.

What You’ll Learn

• The real impact on families. What the evidence shows about families' experiences following a workplace fatality, and where current industry responses need to change.

• Communication that helps, not harms. Practical guidance on how organisations should, and shouldn't, communicate with affected families in the aftermath of a fatality.

• Building trauma-informed support. What genuine, trauma-informed care looks like, and how to embed it into your organisation's incident response.

• Turning tragedy into industry learning. How to strengthen the systems that capture lessons from fatalities, so they lead to prevention rather than sit in a file.

Who Should Attend: 

• Health & Safety and Risk Professionals

• Team Leaders and Managers

• Senior Leaders and Executives

• HR and People and Culture Leaders 

• Anyone responsible for workplace health and safety outcomes