When you’re responsible for workplace safety, a job safety analysis (JSA) is an essential tool for preventing accidents and ensuring compliance. By breaking down tasks into specific steps, a JSA guides you through assessing risks and determining the safest way to complete each job.
Many workplaces feature high-risk setups, with hazards like heavy machinery, flammable materials, or working at height. Without a thorough JSA, these risks could lead to an incident. Conduct a JSA meticulously, and you’ll be able to monitor hazards and put in place clear safety measures before work even begins.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to perform an effective job safety analysis, including best practices and specific hazards to be aware of for each industry.
What is a job safety analysis?
A job safety analysis (JSA) is used to identify potential hazards on a worksite to protect employees from possible injury or even death. A JSA provides insight into what risks are associated with a particular task and what options are available to prevent or mitigate them.
At every workplace, employees are exposed to hazards while on the job – some more, some less. It is a matter of integrating recognized safety and health principles and practices into the task or work operation to reduce the amount of work-related injuries. However, a JSA is not appropriate for tasks that are too broad, for example, “overhaul a hot water system,” or too narrow, for example, “position a jack.” Other terms for describing the process are job hazard analysis (JHA) and job hazard breakdown.
In general, responsible employees create a document that lists the individual job steps and the hazards associated with those steps. It can be difficult to keep track of them all and review each potential hazard. This is where the clarity of a job safety analysis (JSA) checklist helps break down individual work processes and identify potential hazards. The final part of the analysis is to evaluate the information gathered to find actions that can eliminate or minimize the hazards.
What is the relevance of a job safety analysis?
To conduct a job safety analysis is an important obligation for companies to reduce the risk of injury in the workplace as well as to improve overall working conditions. Workplace safety is critical for both employers and employees and using a safety observation report checklist can help to spot potential hazards in the workplace.
Companies that fail to take the necessary safety precautions run the risk of injuring workers, exposing themselves to bad publicity and potential litigation. Workers who take on tasks without being aware of the risks are putting themselves at potential risk. One way for everyone to get around this is to conduct a job safety analysis for all tasks or departure processes.
What is the purpose of a JSA?
But what problem is a JSA responding to?
Every day, thousands of workers are exposed to unsafe working conditions, and hundreds more get injured or die as a result of improper safety training or lack of personal protective equipment that the company should have provided.
An audit aims to report hazards before they result in injury or death.
Everyone has the right to safety and health. Conducting regular safety inspections is not up for debate. Not only is it important to keep employees safe during working hours, but you’ll also want to do it to remain compliant with state and federal rules and regulations. Not doing so could put your business at risk.
According to OSHA, worker rights include:
- Receive training in a language understood by your employees
- All machines and equipment are safe and up to regulatory standards
- All employees receive the proper safety training and equipment
- The right not to be exposed to toxic chemicals or heavy metals
- Report injuries, illness, or hazards without fear of retaliation
- Request an OSHA inspection and be free to talk with the inspector
- See records of work-related injuries, illnesses, or deaths
- Request to see results of audits and inspections
As a starting framework for your JSA, you can browse through these curated checklists, which also draw from various regulations.
What are the 4 steps of a job safety analysis?
There are several ways to conduct a job safety analysis. One way is to assign an employee to analyze individual tasks and note potential hazards. Another option is to bring together a group of professionals who are familiar with the task to get a lot of timely feedback on the process.
Implementing a structured JSA form for the task will assist in performing the job safety analysis. To make this successful, follow these four general steps:
1. Split the task
Divide the task into individual steps as much as possible. They should be very detailed so that you can present the work as thoroughly as possible. You can also divide tasks into sections, such as a PSA section. This way, you only focus on only one area at a time, and there is no need to switch between completely different tasks.
2. Identify risks and hazards
The inspection should begin by going through all the tasks on the job safety analysis worksheet, and noting down all potential risks. A JSA checklist is best for this purpose. It allows for a better overview of the tasks to be completed, and you can easily check off tasks that have already been completed.
3. Take action
After risk identification comes hazard elimination. If it is necessary, a qualified employee should be in chrge of the task. In addition, consider preventive measures to avoid the same risk occurring again
4. Documentation
At the end, complete the documentation with the results and actions. For this purpose, the previously mentioned checklist can serve as a basis with its “note” fields for further notes. Subsequently, you cna convert the analysis into a report listing all individual process steps. Alongside these steps, list down the hazards associated with them and actions for addressing them.
Regardless of the method for the job safety analysis, it is important that the end result is a detailed document that does not exclude any conceivable hazards. Employers must first decide which tasks warrant analysis. You’ll then break down the hazardous tasks into the steps an employee must perform to obtain a reliable job safety analysis.
What types of hazards does a job safety analysis check for?
A job safety analysis checks for any hazards that might pose a threat to workers. This includes but is not limited to:
- Electrical systems
- Noise
- Vibrations
- Heights
- Exposure to the elements
- Extreme high or low temperatures
- Unguarded machinery
- Hazardous chemicals or gases
- Radiation
- Disease
- Violence
- Fire
- Inadequate lighting
- Poor ventilation
- Forklifts
- Biological hazards
- Defective machinery and tools
Each worksite and industry poses its own threats and challenges. Being aware of the risks and anticipating the unexpected will go a long way in keeping employees out of the hospital and on site.
Construction
Construction sites are notoriously dangerous. Hard hats aren’t going to do much if a two-ton pipe falls on your head because of neglected safety precautions. A checklist of potential hazards helps point out potential liabilities to inspectors and reminds workers to stay diligent in their construction site appraisals.
Keep a lookout for the most common construction site dangers:
- Moving objects
- Falling objects
- Airborne particles
- Hand-arm vibration syndrome
- Asbestos
Healthcare
Working in healthcare poses all sorts of risks to individuals, the most common of which is exposure to diseases. But there are other very real perils healthcare workers encounter everyday:
- Radiation exposure
- Laboratory chemicals
- Pharmaceuticals
- Cleaning chemicals
- Patient violence
Oil and Gas
The oil and gas industry is notorious for breaking regulations. It seems every few years there’s another major pipeline that breaks and dumps thousands of tons of oil into the ocean every day. The oil disasters are just one regulation failure we see because of the news. Imagine how many regulations they break when it comes to worker safety.
- Vehicle collisions
- Injury from machinery or heavy objects
- Explosions and fires
- Falls from perilous heights
- High-pressure lines leaking gases
Mining
Like the oil and gas industry, mining has its slew of dangers. Working outside with heavy machinery is a recipe for disaster. Here is a list of some of the most common dangers in the mining industry:
- Water flooding the mines
- Airborne diesel and silica particles
- Rock Bursting during operations
- Worker fatigue
- Risk of exposure
Forestry
In the forestry industry, wherever trees grow, the equipment has to follow. It’s not uncommon for heavy machinery to be rolled up steep hills or placed on dangerous terrain. These are just five examples of what foresters have to be aware of on a daily basis:
- Rock falls
- Whole-body vibrations
- Slipping on wet or icy ground
- Falling tree branches
- Chainsaw kickbacks
Conducting a thorough analysis of a worksite can greatly reduce occupational hazards. Job sites are open to change as conditions improve or worsen. Sometimes these conditions are unpredictable, like changing weather patterns. In this case, put reactive measures in place, such as taking more frequent water breaks in extreme heat, to ensure the safety of everyone in the crew.
What documents are essential for compliance with regulations?
The government has to have some way of keeping track of the odd thirty million businesses or so practicing within the US today. Like so many of their other solutions, they decided to create more paperwork. This not only holds businesses accountable for the wellbeing of those they employ, but it also gives the government a paper trail to follow up on to see whether or not these businesses are complying with the regulations in place to ensure the workforce’s safety.
JSA documents required to stay compliant with federal regulations include:
- Training certifications: Those training new employees on high-risk tasks require a training certification. This ensures that the trainer knows what he or she is doing and can instruct others to complete the task safely.
- Inspection records by qualified persons: A qualified person with the appropriate certifications must carry out the inspections done on a job site. That means employees can’t perform certain inspections. Sometimes a government official or a certified agency has to do the audits.
- Hazard assessment: A list of hazards that employees could potentially be exposed to must be appropriately documented with an accompanying list of preventive safety measures.
- Emergency action plan: There needs to be a set of written instructions covering the course of action employees should take in the event of an unexpected emergency. This could include tornados, hurricanes, power outages, fires, etc.
- Records of injuries, illnesses, or death: Injury and illness records must be posted and available to all employees. It is a worker’s right to know about the job’s risks and possible injuries they may sustain performing the required tasks.
- Written documentation of training programs: Depending on the required tasks, employees might have to undergo hazard training. These trainings must have documentation, with step-by-step procedures detailing how to handle dangerous substances or perform hazardous tasks safely.
- Records of hazardous chemicals: If a company deals in hazardous chemicals, there must be a list of those chemicals.
- Job safety documents: These documents comprise permits required for dangerous work. For example, working with unsafe substances or in extreme temperatures.
- Chemical safety data sheets: If a job site works with dangerous chemicals, they should have a physical copy of the potential health risks and side effects of each dangerous substance in their employ readily available to employees.
- Department of Labor required postings: Hang any and all posters by the Department of Labor in a conspicuous place that’s visible to all employees.
The physical documentation above must be presented to the safety officer upon request.
Advantages of a digital checklist for job safety analysis
With Lumiform’s mobile app, safety managers can easily conduct workplace safety inspections via tablet or smartphone – online or offline. The desktop software is used to create digital checklists that can be used to collect data on-site for later analysis.
Through the app, you can quickly assign corrective actions to team members and easily track implementatio. Thanks to easy communication within the team and with third parties, your team can improve internal processes and eliminate risks up to four times faster. With Lumiform, responsible employees can implement:
- The flexible form construction kit makes it possible to create new individual checklists at any time and to adapt them again and again.
- Planning a job safety analysis with a template from Lumiform’s comprehensive template library.
- Generate real-time data on work processes. Thus, safety becomes measurable, and you constantly optimize processes based on data.
- Gain an overview of employee safety immediately with the help of the results.
- All audit results are automatically bundled into one report and can be sent immediately to stakeholders.