»Setting PrioritiesObtain Help with Setting Priorities
OHS Hazards
Obtain help with setting priorities
This section contains information from
- OHS Reference Guide Part 3 - Risk Management
(Click here for the pdf version of Part 3)
Reference Guide Part 3 - OHS Management Systems
3.1 Risk Management Overview
An essential step in the management of occupational health and safety in the meat industry or in any industry is ensuring that all hazards are identified, the risks assessed, and effective control measures are developed and implemented. This approach is a fundamental principle enshrined within all OHSW legislation in all States and Territories across Australia. This section deals with the general provisions of risk management (RM). Part 4 examines more specific/common hazards found in the meat industry and includes further hints on identification, risk assessment and control options.
What is risk management?
Risk management is a component of the general field of management. Risk management is “the culture, processes and structures that are directed towards realising potential opportunities whilst managing adverse effects” (AS/NZS 4360: 2004, p 4).
However, many organisations tended to only focus on obvious ‘adverse events’, that is, hazards where injuries were occurring. This can lead to not adequately addressing hazards:
- with a low probability of occurring but with a severe consequence if they do occur or
- with a perceived low risk/minor issue
This in turn leads to a threat to employees, and also to the continuation of the business. The investigation into the Waterfall train accident highlighted the problems associated with this approach.
“SRA had insufficient safety and risk management expertise and had not systematically identified hazards to its operations or effectively controlled all the risks that had been identified. It had a reliance on accident trends to identify risks …. Which demonstrated a ‘reactive’ approach to risk management”
McInerney 2003, Waterfall Railway Safety Investigation Final Report p 5
The term risk management is used widely. It can be applied to all areas of an organisations operation and is not just used to apply to health and safety. For example banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions apply ‘risk management’ to their financial transactions; organisers of public events consider security as part of risk management; product development includes risk management.
The most common way risk management is used in relation to health and safety is specific to the hazard management element. That is:
- Hazards are identified
- The risks are assessed
- Control measures are determined and implemented
- Organisations monitor and review to ensure risks are effectively managed.
3.2 Hazard identification
A hazard is something that has the potential to harm the health, safety or welfare of people at work. Hazards can be immediate and obvious, as in safety hazards (eg, knives, bandsaws, unguarded machinery) or longer term and more difficult to identify as in health hazards (hazardous substances, noise, zoonotic diseases from working with animals). A hazard can be either a health hazard or a safety hazard, or it can be both, causing both acute and chronic effects (eg, a single loud noise as in a rifle shot to control an escaped animal can cause an acute noise-induced hearing loss that may or may not be reversible, whereas long-term exposure to noise over 85 dB(A) during a period of years can also lead to irreversible noise-induced hearing loss, in this case building up gradually over years of exposure).
To identify hazards to health, safety and welfare, a wide variety of methods are available. An organisation can:
- Review legislative requirements of own state/territory including Act(s), Regulations, Codes of Practice, Guidelines, Standards (Australian and ASCC)
- Check records of injuries and incidents (including near misses) that have occurred in your plant or in other similar workplaces. If you are referring to data supplied by your workers compensation claims agent, it is helpful to refer to the mechanism of injuries, as they will often point more directly to the hazard in the workplace
- Utilise industry knowledge through talking to experienced workers, reading meat industry specific sources of information (such as training manuals and this reference guide) or attending industry meetings
- conduct walk-through inspections of the plant using a checklist to identify potential hazards (refer to Part 3.6.1 for a sample hazard identification checklist)
- consult with workers to find out what problems they have in their jobs
- Conduct incident/accident investigations that highlight contributing hazards/factors (refer to Part 3.6.2 for more information on incident investigation).
- Review specific risk assessment checklists (eg manual tasks, electrical, hazardous substances)
- Review complaints
- Review maintenance records
- Conduct health and environment monitoring
- Conduct task analysis to identify all hazards of a particular task.
- Conduct formal safety audits
- Access sources of information on hazards from ‘parent’ or related companies
- Review publications and guidance material produced by other state and territory legislative bodies
- Obtain expert advice.
It is a then necessary to document the hazards that have been identified. A sample hazard register has been supplied in Part 3.6.3. This hazard register can then serve as both an action plan for hazard control and a legal record of the work that you have done to identify hazards in your plant. A breakdown of the location of the hazard and the job/task can help to pinpoint the specific hazard more effectively.
3.3 Risk assessment
Risk assessment is a process of analysing and evaluating the identified hazards. The process may be used to:
- set priorities for the management of all identified hazards
- detail all the risk factors in a particular hazard
- analyse a task or process to establish the relative risk level of all the hazards present.
Unfortunately there is no consistency in reference material with regard to the above applications of the ‘risk assessment’ stage. The assessment is a process of gathering information and making decisions.
There is no 'right' answer. People will make certain decisions about risk because they have differing ideas about what is acceptable. For this reason it is important that those who will be affected by the decisions made (the employer, relevant workers and their representatives) should be involved in the assessment.
For the purposes of this guide, the setting of priorities and analysing the risks in a particular hazard, is presented as 2 linked components.
Component 1
The first component is to determine the level of risk of all the hazards identified in the workplace or part of a workplace.
This assessment is often best done in two stages:
A Assessment of hazards if no controls in place – the Initial Risk Rating (IRR)
B Assessment of hazards with current controls in place – the Residual Risk Rating (RRR).
This staged approach provides two features:
- It allows the organisation to document how well it is controlling its overall risk (comparison of IRR compared to RRR)
- Examination of the RRR then allows priorities to be established for more detailed assessment and action.
Component 2
The second component is to conduct a more detailed analysis of the identified highest risk hazards. This will require assessment of all the factors contributing to the risk level.
Deciding on the ‘level’ of risk
Estimating the level of risk requires consideration of the severity of the consequences and the likelihood of an accident.
That is risk = consequence x likelihood.
In the workplace the existing controls in place will affect both the consequences and the likelihood, which is the level of risk. Thus a hazard may exist in one workplace and be controlled and exist in another workplace and not be well controlled.
The Queensland Workplace Health and Safety Risk Management Code of Practice: Supplement 2 (2007), outlines some of the most useful factors to consider when assessing consequences and likelihood. They are summarised below.
The consequence is the measure of expected severity. That is, the worst consequence that could occur as a result of the hazard and associated risks. The consequences may range from death to a minor injury requiring first aid.
Numerous factors can impact on the consequences and include:
- Potential for ‘chain reaction’ ie where a situation could escalate to create a worse hazard
- Speeds of projectiles or moving parts
- Concentration of a substance e.g. a diluted versus concentrated hazardous substance
- Position of worker relative to the hazard eg working close to a high noise level machine versus working a distance from a high level noise machine
- Volume of a substance eg a small leak of ammonia versus the release of a large amount
- Energy gained eg falling a small distance versus falling a number of metres
- • Energy in equipment eg bandsaw compared to hand tool.
Likelihood is the chance of the event actually occurring. That is how often you would expect the event to occur. It includes the combination of exposure and probability. Likelihood may range from ‘it could happen regularly’ to ‘it probably never will happen’.
There are numerous factors that impact on the likelihood. Some of these factors include:
- how often the situation occurs
- the duration of the exposure
- how many people are exposed
- environmental conditions
- the skills and experience of persons exposed
- position of worker relative to the hazard
- distractions
- environmental conditions
- quantities of materials or multiple exposure points involved
- condition of equipment e.g. preventive maintenance versus not maintained
- effectiveness of existing control measures.
Thus, estimating risk is a subjective judgement based on the available information. There are numerous formulas to estimate the level of risk to establish the priorities. The level of risk may be represented by a matrix, a score or as a graph. This is an exercise based on the skills and knowledge of those carrying out the activity. Again there is no ‘correct’ one or definitive answer.
Component 1
This stage of the risk assessment gives a basis for ranking hazards in terms of level of risk. As stated, these scores are useful for comparison of:
- Improvements that have been made
- Priorities for further assessment and action.
The scores give a guide to the order the hazards and associated risks should be addressed. For example those hazards that fall into the higher risk category should be addressed more urgently than those in the less risky category. The number of risk values and risk categories for assigning risk can vary from one risk assessment tool to another. For example each state health and safety authority has its own risk rating matrix and a variety of assessment tools are described in the HB436 Risk Management Guidelines – Companion to AS/NZS 4360 (the Australian Standard for Risk Management). Examples of these are provided in Tables 5 and 6 below. An example of using a matrix to determine risk is outlined in Part 3.6.6.
In the second stage of Component 1 risk assessment you will then assess how big the risk is with the measures you have in place to make the task safer. If the risk rating does not improve to an acceptable level, this makes it a priority to improve. Initially you may be trying to reduce the risk rating of tasks to a mid-risk. Once this is achieved you will continue to work to decrease the rating for all tasks.
Table 5: Sample Risk Assessment Matrix from State OHS Authority
| How Severely Could it Hurt Someone? | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
How Likely is it to Hurt Someone? |
Kill or Cause Permanent Disability or Ill Health |
Cause Long Term Illness or Serious Injury |
Medical Attention and/or |
First Aid Only |
Very likely – |
1 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
Likely – |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
Unlikely – |
2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Very unlikely – |
3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
Source: Hazpak - WorkCover NSW
Table 6: Sample Risk Assessment Matrix
View Matrix Table
Component 2
Once priorities are established the next component is the detailed analysis of the hazards with the highest priorities. Every hazard has particular factors that contribute to the level of risk and these are termed ‘risk factors’. For example the risk factors contributing to the level of risk for manual tasks include types of movements and posture including bending, stretching, twisting, the distance the load moved, the weight, whether the load is awkward, the frequency, if the floor surfaces are uneven and so on. Assessing a specific hazard in a task or process requires reviewing information on the hazard, identifying and investigating all the risk factors and considering the current methods of managing those risk factors. Relevant regulations, codes of practice or industry guidance material should be referred to.
When conducting the risk assessment for a specific hazard, by examining the risk factors, you will often also be given a clear idea of what controls should or could be in place.
The assessment of different types of hazards should involve those with the appropriate level of expertise. For example electrical hazards will usually involve the maintenance staff.
This approach of analysing the risk factors for the level of risk may also be applied to processes or tasks that contain a number of hazards. This is often referred to as task analysis. As with other aspects of assessing risk it may be a relatively simple process where a workplace team may be able to carry out the assessment or it may be a complex task requiring specialist technical skills and knowledge.
Thus risk assessment may be applied to all the hazards in a workplace to set priorities, to specific tasks or processes involving more than one hazard, and to specific priority hazards in a task or process. The goal of all risk assessment is to ensure all risk factors and their relative importance is considered. This leads to the development of effective controls.
There are formats for rating hazards overall to set priorities, for addressing risk factors specific to types of hazards such as manual handling and hazardous substances and for rating different hazards within a particular task or process as in task analysis. Each company should adopt methods that are suitable to its needs and are able to be carried out competently by the designated employees. Where the complexity of the task is beyond the skills and resources of the company, external expertise should be obtained.
Resist the temptation to bypass the risk assessment stage, as you may find the control you choose is inappropriate, creates another hazard, or doesn't adequately address the hazard eg, where a worker slips and falls down metal steps, and non-slip tread is applied to each step, but the steep incline of the steps and the lack of a handrail have not been addressed and the risk of falling still remains largely uncontrolled.
Re-assessment
Re-assessment needs to be done at regular intervals, dependant upon on type of workplace and/or hazards present. Further risk assessment needs to also be undertaken whenever:
- there is a change in the workplace, which could affect health, safety or welfare
- when there is new information about a hazard
- when legislation changes
- following an incident or accident.
Cost consideration in risk assessment
When considering ‘consequences’ it can sometimes be useful to consider the estimated cost of injury. This can be sourced either from your workers compensation statistics, or from benchmarking with other organisations. If taken from your claims costs data, the direct cost should be multiplied by at least five times, to conservatively outline the cost of this specific hazard to your organisation. This more accurate cost outlines both the immediate or obvious costs, but more importantly expands on the hidden or indirect overheads that really cause financial losses within your organisation ie, losses incurred with production downtime while the accident is being investigated, costs of recruitment and training of other personnel to fill the position temporarily (or permanently) vacated by the injured worker, costs of investigation from regulatory bodies and documentation required, not to mention simple time lost with transfer of the injured worker to first aid, medical or hospital care and loss of morale among other workers. This estimated cost of injury can then be compared with the cost of the control of the hazard, and this simple form of cost benefit analysis can prove a profound motivator for adequate control of the hazard.
3.4 Risk control
Once the hazard has been assessed, control options for eliminating or reducing the risk of exposure to the hazard must be implemented.
Types of controls
In OHS there is a well-established set of steps for managing risks. These steps (known as the hierarchy of control – refer to Figure 8) range from the most effective to the least effective methods for managing risk. Heath and safety legislation generally requires the hierarchy of control to be used particularly in relation to plant, noise, manual handling and hazardous substances.
The more the controls are from the ‘top’ of the hierarchy (ie Elimination or Substitution), the less risk there will be involved for the task. This is because, using controls from further down the hierarchy:
- do less to distance the recipient (ie person) from the hazardous energy source
- rely heavily on human behaviour. Hence they also generally require a larger amount of monitoring from supervisors and managers and more checks/reviews to be conducted to ensure they are being followed.
Measures from the bottom of the hierarchy should be regarded as interim measures until preferred ones can be implemented.
Other considerations
In addition, when selecting control measures it is important to make sure that the controls:
- do not create other risks eg equipment to assist with manual tasks introduces plant hazards that are not well controlled
- allow workers to do their work without undue discomfort or distress.
Figure 8: The heirarchy of control measures table
Control options/ideas
Information about how to control the risks to health and safety can be found by:
- checking the regulations and approved codes of practice that provide control measures for the particular hazard
- checking meat-industry-specific guidelines that advise control measures for the particular hazard (refer particularly to Part 4 of this guide and the redmeathub )
- consultation with workers who are exposed to the hazard
- seeking information from employer and worker organisations and unions
- seeking information from relevant manufacturers or suppliers of hazardous substances or plant
- obtaining advice from occupational health and safety consultants
- contacting government agencies and other sources of health and safety information.
Once you have identified the control mechanisms that are most appropriate for the hazard, enter this on your hazard register (Part 3.6.3), as a record of hazard control, or as an action plan item if the hazard is yet to be adequately controlled. Depending on the range of controls that are needed, controls will probably need to be classified into short, medium and long-term options. The action plan outlining responsibilities, timeframes and monitoring mechanisms (see Figure 9) can then be implemented.
The risk management process is then repeated for each identified hazard, in order of priority, until each one is adequately controlled
Figure 9: Sample entry to a hazard register - view pdf of this figure
How do you control risks at the planning and purchasing stage?
Management of hazards should include preventing hazards from entering the workplace. State and Territory legislation requires health and safety to be addressed at the design and planning stages. This requires employers to develop procedures to ensure health and safety is considered at the planning and purchasing stages. These procedures should include consultative mechanisms with employees or their health and safety representatives on all proposed changes to the workplace, plant and substances.
There are numerous strategies to prevent hazards from entering the workplace. These include
- considering OHS in the design of all new buildings and maintenance projects
- including OHS as a criteria in the purchasing procedures
- conducting risk assessments on all new plant, equipment and tools
- including OHS requirements in preventive maintenance for all mechanical and electrical equipment and plant
- consider OHS in the development and review of all procedures and systems
- including OHS in the process of employing contractors.
The goal is to avoid bringing hazards into the workplace. This is the most cost effective approach to the control of hazards.
An example of a purchasing checklist that can be useful in this process can be found in Part 3.6.6.
3.5 Monitor and review control measures
Each hazard
The controls implemented for each hazard should be assessed to determine:
- have they been implemented as planned/intended
- if they created other hazards or risks
- if they have provided the anticipated reduction in risk
- how they have impacted on:
- the residual risk
- injury rates and severity
- staff satisfaction with the changes made
- if anything has changed that may impact on the hazard or affect the residual risk.
The timeframe for undertaking this review should be undertaken at the same time as the risk is assessed and controls determined.
Plant-wide
The controls implemented across the plant should also be assessed as part of the overall OHSMS review and evaluation. Similar criteria to those used above can be used. This review of the overall impact of the changes made should be undertaken on a six-monthly or an annual basis.
On-going
The management of OHS hazards is an on-going activity. This can be due to:
- Number of risks that need to be managed
- Research findings changing risk severity or controls required
- Changes in technology and techniques
- Changes in business focus.
Hence there is a need to continue to reduce risk by implementing the risk management process. This is most readily done if the risk management activities are programmed into the overall business plans for the company into the foreseeable future.
^Top
3.6 Relevant forms and resources
3.6.1 Sample Hazard Identification Checklist
- Download Sample Hazard Identification Checklist in word format
3.6.2 Incident Investigation
- Download Sample Incident Investigation in word format
3.6.3 Sample Hazard Register
- Download Sample Hazard Register in word format
3.6.4 Sample Model Housekeeping Checklist
- Download Sample Model Housekeeping Checklist in word format
3.6.5 Example of using a matrix to assess level of risk
- Download Example of using a matrix to assess level of risk in word format
3.6.6 Purchase Evaluation Checklist
- Download Purchase Evaluation Checklist in word format
^Top