Standardize your JSA Process with Job Safety Analysis Software

A job safety analysis (JSA), also known as a job hazard analysis (JHA), is a way of finding and fixing uncontrolled hazards to prevent injuries and illnesses. It involves breaking down work into job tasks and paying close attention to employees as they perform the tasks, use tools, and interact with the work environments. Once hazards are identified, you can then initiate corrective actions to reduce risk.

If you don’t know the hazards your employees face in their daily tasks, how can you keep them safe? Performing JSAs, keeping them updated and sharing results with workers is essential to reducing risks. Both employers and employees benefit. For instance, JSAs help to:

• Reduce workplace injuries and illnesses
• Lower workers compensation costs
• Increase productivity and cut lost time
• Improve employee health and satisfaction
• Meet regulatory requirements related to identification and control of occupational risks

There are several steps to performing a job safety analysis, but they all align to the basic risk management functions of identifying hazards, assessing those hazards, and determining and implementing the appropriate controls to minimize risk to workers and the business. These steps include:

1. Identify the jobs performed in your workplace
2. Breakdown each job into its constituent tasks or individual actions required to complete the job
3. List each job task and ALL potential hazards that could arise during performance of each individual task
4. Assess the initial risk of each job task hazard, including a qualitative or semi-quantitative evaluation of the severity and likelihood of potential incidents that could occur during each job task
5. Consult with a broad group of affected stakeholders to consider potential risk controls that will most effectively minimize or eliminate the hazards encountered during that task using the NIOSH Hierarchy of Controls (elimination, substitution, engineering, administrative, PPE) as a guide
6. Select the most effective and feasible control options and implement those controls
7. Evaluate the effectiveness of implemented controls and record the residual risk in your JSA

It should be noted that once you have performed the initial risk assessment, you will be able to rank and prioritize jobs for review, focusing on new jobs, high risk jobs and non-routine jobs first, then addressing jobs in order of decreasing priority. Always perform a JSA for new jobs and remember to review your JSAs at least annually or whenever there is an incident with consideration for any changes to jobs which could introduce unforeseen job hazards and to evaluate long-term control effectiveness.

A multi-disciplinary team (EHS, supervisors, production, maintenance, operations, quality, etc.) should perform the JSA to get thorough descriptions of the tasks and associated hazards. A key factor is that the front-line workers who regularly conduct the relevant job tasks should participate on the JSA team, since they have the most critical working knowledge of the tasks and their hazards. Once the JSA is complete, the supervisor should incorporate the use of JSAs in their on-the-job training program to increase awareness of hazards and controls for all workers that may perform the job tasks covered in the JSAs.

Using paper to manage the JSA process is inefficient and puts your information at risk of being lost, they are difficult to update, potentially impossible to access in a timely manner, and almost impossible to learn from if they are filed away or just sit in a binder on a shelf. Managing and tracking the process is arduous in a paper system, and it’s much harder to access and use the JSAs as they’re intended to be used, for improving awareness and management of workplace risks. Additionally, use of paper systems tends to create too much variability and inaccuracies for the JSAs to be of real value. If you ask 10 different people to develop a JSA for a job in the absence of additional information and support, you’ll likely get 10 very different JSAs. One reason is that different people may not consistently identify the same hazards, may select different controls, or may differently assess and apply the risk reduction factors associated with those controls.

Paper-based JSAs used to be the main method to conduct this essential safety task, but luckily, that is no longer the case, and certainly is not the best practice. Modern, digitized JSA capabilities solve many of the challenges that are common in paper-based JSA systems. Digital JSA capabilities offer a common template for conducting JSAs and a library of base controls and associated risk reduction factors, and automatically apply the correct factors when calculating risk scores. Your organization will have the consistent data it needs on both hazards and controls, and you’ll be able to manage the entire process from a single dashboard, with better data to gain insights about your workplace hazards, the controls the organization relies on, and a method to verify and determine the effectiveness of risk controls.

Using job safety analysis software when performing and documenting JSAs enhances transparency, drives visibility and accountability, and facilitates hazard and control trending. This fosters a proactive safety culture and increases risk maturity in organizations.

With the right JSA software capability, you’ll be able to:

• reduce manual data entry errors and version control problems that can occur with spreadsheets,
• import existing data;
• create consistency in the data being entered;
• manage the job safety analysis process through a centralized dashboard;
• schedule, assign and track associated actions and risk reduction activities; and
• use the data to gain meaningful insights about your hazards and controls.

According to guidance published by OSHA, you should prioritize completing JSAs for jobs with the following characteristics:

• Highest injury or illness rates;
• Potential for severe or disabling injuries or illnesses, even if there’s no prior history of serious incidents;
• A single simple “human error” can lead to a severe accident or injury;
• They’re new jobs for your worksite, or they’ve undergone major revisions; and
• They’re complex enough to require written instructions.

A good JSA process is a kind of investigation. You’re carefully reviewing job tasks to identify what can go wrong and how likely it is to go wrong, what factors might increase likelihood of adverse outcomes, the severity of the consequences, and which controls could reduce either the likelihood or the severity of outcome.

With that in mind, you’ll need to make sure your JSAs are capturing all of the relevant details to be effective, such as:

• Where the job occurs;
• What kinds of hazards are present (e.g., chemical exposures, noise, potential falls, etc.) and in which job tasks;
• What outcomes could occur, and what risks levels do they have; and
• What controls are present, and how effective are they at reducing risk