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).
Learn more about Managing hazards and risks.