Establishing A Culture Of Safety Through A JSA

In their performance of a task, your workers may settle into routines that allow them to work faster. However, no matter how long-established these routines are, it does not necessarily mean that they are the safest way to complete work tasks.

In a Job Safety Analysis or JSA, all the steps necessary to complete a task at work are carefully scrutinised in order to determine the safest possible way to perform the said task and ensure the health and wellbeing of everyone in the workplace. The chief benefit of a JSA is that it allows managers and supervisors to identify risks and hazards which may have previously gone unnoticed. Apart from that, this type of analysis can be used to improve the knowledge of both supervisors and workers on issues related to safety and health at the workplace. Finally, the information gleaned from the job safety analysis can be used as a training guide for new hires of the business organisation.

A job safety analysis is conducted using four steps: the selection of the task/job to be analysed; breaking down the task into a series of steps; identification of risks and hazards; and determination of preventive measures.

Ideally, every task in the workplace should undergo scrutiny and analysis. However, conducting a job safety analysis can be a time-consuming endeavour and requires a high number of resources. As such, it is worthwhile to know which tasks merit a closer evaluation. These include tasks that have high incidences of accidents/injuries; those that have a high potential of causing illnesses or injuries; new or modified tasks; and jobs that are performed infrequently.

Breaking down the task into detailed steps can be done with a supervisor observing workers actually performing it or with the workers telling the supervisor how they would normally perform the task. It is always preferable for the supervisor to actually observe the performance of the task under normal circumstances with the actual tools and equipment normally used.

The next step involved in a job safety analysis is pinpointing potential risks and hazards. The goal here is not to remedy these but to merely identify these and bring to the forefront those that have gone unnoticed.

The final step involved in a job safety analysis is putting into place preventive measures. These include: the elimination of the hazard, whenever possible; containment of the hazard; and the modification of work processes.

Due to the sheer number of things that need to be documented, it is worthwhile to use a worksheet for job safety analysis.