This material is for training purposes only to inform the reader of occupational safety and health best practices and general compliance requirements and is not a substitute for provisions of the OSH Act of 1970 or any governmental regulatory agency.
MODULE 1: PREPARE TO CONDUCT THE JHA
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Introduction
The first step in preparing to conduct a JHA is to review all of the jobs in the workplace and make a list of those jobs that might require a JHA. Involve Your Employees Get together with your employees and talk about the actual and potential hazards and unsafe behaviors they believe might exist in their current work and surroundings. Discuss the possible accidents that might result from the hazards and behaviors. Next, come up with ideas to eliminate or control those hazards and behaviors. By the way, if you can eliminate or reduce hazards, don't wait until the JHA is conducted. Eliminate or reduce the hazard as soon as possible. |
It is very important to involve your employees in the JHA process because they have a unique understanding of the job, and this knowledge is invaluable for finding hazards. Involving employees will help minimize oversights, ensure a quality analysis, and get workers to "buy in" to the solutions because they've helped in some way to develop the procedures. If they are not involved in developing the JHA, they will not be as likely to "own" the safe job procedures. As a result, they may not want to use safe procedures and practices that they believe have been "imposed" on them.
Look for Hazardous Conditions and Unsafe Behaviors
During the job review process, focus on identifying hazardous conditions and unsafe behaviors. Remember, it takes a hazard and exposure to the hazard before an accident can occur. So, it makes sense to look for them during the review. Sources to help identify hazardous conditions and unsafe behaviors include:
- Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs)
- Experienced workers
- Accident and incident reports
- First aid statistical records
- Behavior Based Safety (BBS) reports
- Safety committee meeting minutes
- Safety inspection reports
- Previous JHAs
- Existing work procedures
- Equipment manuals
- Preventive/corrective maintenance records
Behaviors Some jobs may require potentially high-risk behaviors that should be identified in a JHA. High risk behaviors that might increase the probability and severity of an injury or illness include:
- Working at elevation, no matter what the job is
- Lifting, lowering, pushing, pulling and other manual handling operations
- Others working above or below the work area
- Use of bridge cranes, man lifts, or other heavy equipment
- Working on or near energized equipment/components
- Working alone or in isolated workplaces
- Operating vehicles (i.e. trucks, forklifts, etc.)
- Working within a confined space or under temperature extremes
Review your worksite's history of accidents and illnesses that needed treatment and incidents that required repair or replacement of equipment. It's also important to look at near miss events in which an injury did not occur, but could have. These events are indicators that existing hazard controls (if any) may not be adequate and deserve more scrutiny.
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Conduct a Risk Analysis
Once you have identified tasks you believe might require a JHA, it's important to prioritize each task. To do this, analyze each task to determine their degree of risk. To determine the degree of risk objectively, it's important to know what risk is, so let's discuss the concept. |
What is the probability? Probability describes the likelihood that a worker will be injured or become ill if exposed to a hazard. Common terms used to describe probability are:
- unlikely - Injury from exposure has low probability. Less than 50% chance.
- likely - Injury from exposure has moderate probability. 50/50 Chance.
- very likely - Injury from exposure has high probability. Greater than 50% chance.
- minor - other than serious physical harm that does not prevent the employee from continuing to work in the same job.
- serious - serious physical harm that prevents the employee continuing to work in the same job.
- death - fatality
- The number of employees exposed to hazards
- The number of hazards in the procedure
- The number of opportunities for unsafe behaviors
- The frequency of exposure to hazards
- The employee's belief about the hazards
- The duration of exposure to specific hazards
- The proximity of employees to the point of danger
- The complexity of the procedure
- Potential severity of the injury or illness when exposed
- Unreasonable workload (physically/mentally incapable of meeting expectations)
- Working under distress (hurry, fatigue, illness, personal problems)
Another simple technique to help determine risk is called the Risk Assessment Matrix. Once you've estimated probability and severity, you can place the task in the appropriate section of the matrix. Once you've entered all tasks, you can easily determine which jobs to analyze first.
To determine risk, crunch the numbers
To more precisely determine risk, you may want to use numerical values like those described in the tables below. Quantifying risk helps justify how you've prioritized jobs. Using the two tables below, you can develop "risk scores" to indicate the degree of risk in each job.
For example, a job in which exposure to a danger zone is like to result in an injury or illness would receive a score of "6" in the table above.
In this case, a job in which exposure might result in a lost time injury to one worker would receive a score of "50".
Multiplying the Probability Score (6) by the Severity Score (50) in the example above would result in a Risk Score of 300. You might consider any job with a risk score of 200 or higher to be a high risk and, therefore, the Risk Score in this example indicates conducting a JHA on this job should be a top priority.
Prioritize Jobs - Worst First
Now that you have some idea how much risk is involved in each job, you can prioritize them. As mentioned earlier, a common strategy is to prioritize the most hazardous job first. If a JHA is required for many tasks in your workplace, priority should go to the following types of jobs:
- Jobs with the highest injury or illness rates;
- Jobs with the potential to cause severe or disabling injuries or illness, even if there is no history of previous accidents;
- Jobs in which one simple human error could lead to a severe accident or injury;
- Jobs that are new to your operation or have undergone changes in processes and procedures; and
- Jobs complex enough to require written instructions.
| Student Opinion: According to William I., it's important to understand that all the (potentially) "severe events" should be addressed first, then down to critical, etc. He has seen many cases where customers and safety professionals have focused on frequency issues because there is data to review and success to demonstrate. Meanwhile they ignore large loss potential events until they occur. In his opinion, as you address the large loss potential events, there is corollary benefit to the "less severe but more frequent" incidents. |
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