What are hazards?
A hazard is anything that has the potential to harm the health and safety of a person or cause damage to a property or the environment.
Hazards at the workplace can include noisy machinery, a moving forklift, chemicals, electricity, working at heights, and repetitive tasks. Inappropriate behaviour that adversely affects a worker’s health and safety is also a hazard.
What is a risk?
Risk is the possibility that harm might occur when people are exposed to a hazard. Risk management involves pre-empting what could go wrong at your workplace and considering what the potential consequences and outcomes could be.
What are controls?
Controls are measures put in place to control risks. Control measures can identify, eliminate or reduce the potential exposure to a hazard. Alternatively, control measures can negate the effects and consequences of an unwanted event that has resulted from a hazard.
Control measures can also:
- prevent an unwanted event from occurring or reduce the loss of control of the hazard (e.g. containing or reducing an energy release or ensuring the secure guarding of moving parts of machinery to eliminate the potential for contact)
- reduce the effects of an unwanted event that has resulted from a hazard (e.g. in the case of an incident quickly providing emergency actions and medical care to help reduce the impact on your workers).
What is risk management?
Risk management involves considering what could happen if someone is exposed to a hazard and how likely it is to happen. As a first point of call you should always aim to eliminate risks. If you cannot eliminate the risks, you must minimise them so far as is reasonably practicable.
Risk management is recognised as an essential component of good management and governance. Regularly checking and updating your safety plans helps you make better decisions to keep your workplace safe.
Risk management responsibilities
Persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) and duty holders both have a role in managing work health and safety risks in the workplace and must make every effort to either eliminate or minimise such risks.
Workers also have a duty to take reasonable care of their own health and safety and a responsibility not to adversely affect the health and safety of other people around them in the workplace.
Effective risk management starts with a commitment to health and safety from those who operate and manage the business or undertaking. This can be achieved by consulting with your workers and appointed health and safety representatives (HSRs).
Risk management should be used for both physical and psychological risks in the workplace. Psychological risks are risks that affect a person’s psychological health (their mental health).
Managing work health and safety risks involves four important steps.
Step 1: Spot the hazards
Identify the hazard and find out what could cause harm. Hazards are things and situations that could harm a person or cause damage to property or equipment.
Learn more about spotting hazards.
Step 2: Assess risks
Conduct a risk assessment to understand the nature of harm that could be caused by potential hazards. This will determine how serious that harm could be.
A risk assessment involves looking at what could happen if someone is exposed to a hazard and the chance of it occurring. A risk assessment can also help to ascertain:
- the severity of a risk
- whether your control measures are effective or need revising
- what action you should take to control the risk
- how imperative and urgent the required action is.
Note: This step might not be required if the hazards, risks and their control measures are already in place and widely known throughout your organisation.
Learn more about assessing risks.
Step 3: Manage and control risks
Set control measures to manage and control risks.
You should endeavour to implement the most effective control measure that is reasonably practicable in the circumstances and always follow up to ensure it is maintained and sustained. To control risks you can follow the hierarchy of control measures. These measures are ranked from the highest to the lowest level of protection and reliability.
Learn more on managing risks.
Step 4: Monitor and review control measures
Review hazards and control measures to ensure they are working as planned.
Risk management processes in the workplace will be implemented in different ways depending on the size and nature of your organisation. Larger businesses and those in sectors where workers are exposed to more or higher risks are likely to need more complex sophisticated risk management processes.
Learn more on how to monitor and review your control measures.
How can I design a safe work environment?
Pre-empting risks at the design phase of your workplace is the ideal way to reduce risk for your organisation. By assessing the risk of work tasks and equipment ahead of time, risks are less likely to be introduced.
When designing your workplace, ensure:
- work flows smoothly and sequentially
- workstations are adjustable and ergonomic to suit people of all sizes and capabilities
- there is physical separation between your workers, moving vehicles and dangerous equipment
- adequate planning is conducted for relocations, refurbishments or the introduction of new engineering systems.
When designing tasks and processes, allow your workers:
- workloads that are manageable
- reasonable and flexible working hours
- appropriate duties that alleviate excessive manual handling or repetitive tasks
- realistic deadlines to comfortably complete their tasks.
When purchasing and using new equipment, ensure:
- the equipment is operational for its assigned role or purpose
- the equipment is safely guarded and stored correctly
- workers are trained and knowledgeable on how to use the equipment safely
- the equipment is regularly maintained, safety tested and tagged prior to use
- data sheets and operating manuals for the equipment is received from your designers, manufacturers, importers and suppliers and accessible to your workers for easy reference.
Learn more on how to manage work health and safety risks in your workplace.