What Is A Job Safety Analysis
A Job Safety Analysis (JSA) is an approach you can use to determine potential areas of danger for all your employees’ workplace tasks.
Some examples of hazardous tasks are:
- Tasks involving moving parts
- Task where workers’ mobility is compromised
- Tasks where the weather and external factors can cause danger
- Tasks where accidents have occurred in the past
You probably have an idea of where many dangers are, but a JSA will help you make sure you have analyzed the worker’s jobs thoroughly.
What Is the Purpose of JSA?
You may be wondering, “What is a JSA supposed to do for my organization?” Performing a JSA will help you systematically detect problem areas before an issue occurs. This will reduce the workers’ risks on the job.
The approach is methodic so you can rely on the JSA process rather than your own (potentially flawed) ability to detect every risk. Being proactive and using a JSA can significantly reduce damaging incidents, which is always the goal.
When Should a Job Safety Analysis Be Completed?
Ideally, a JSA should be completed before having workers start on a new job. A big part of a JSA is being proactive and heading off issues before they happen.
If your project is already ongoing and you simply haven’t been able to do a JSA up until this point, you can complete it mid-project. However, it should be done sooner rather than later.
If you are having trouble taking this task on, contacting a professional safety risk management consultant from Safety By Design could be helpful.
What Is the Difference Between JSA and Risk Assessment?
A JSA and a risk assessment are both ways you can analyze dangers and promote safety. The difference is that a JSA focuses on specific jobs, while a risk assessment focuses on the entire facility and potential risk on a larger scale.
JSA Training
If this sounds a bit overwhelming, it definitely can be. When you’re dealing with employee safety, you want to make sure you’re doing everything correctly. It’s a big burden that your employees’ work safety depends on your proper supervision. At Safety By Design, we offer safety training in Houston to help you gain a deeper understanding of these important topics.
How to Do a JSA
In a JSA, safety can be systematically optimized. The rest of this article explains the aspects of a job safety analysis step-by-step.
Starting a Job Safety Analysis
It is best to start analyzing the most dangerous jobs first. It would be unfortunate to have a preventable accident occur while you were optimizing the safety of other, less dangerous, jobs.
You should prioritize analyzing jobs where accidents are abnormally severe, jobs that already have a higher frequency of accidents, and jobs that are new or have newly established processes. A reasonable place to start would be the OSHA fatal four hazards.
Document Job Duties
After selecting a job to analyze, the next step is to document job duties. Do this by breaking up a job into small steps that you can optimize individually. Generally, a job should be no more than 10 steps. If it is any longer, simply consider it two separate jobs.
This section of a JSA, though a bit tedious, helps to make sure every aspect of a job is analyzed. Include everything from start to clean-up. Make sure that you assess all known details.
Identify Hazards
Next, you’ll work to identify potential hazards in each step. It may help to visualize each step in the job.
Are workers using heavy machinery? Are there moving parts where a misstep could cause injury? Are you taking into account the location of the job and the elements around it like slippery walkways or workers working at height?
Meticulously think over all worst-case scenarios like these. This list is obviously just a start, but as you analyze, a good thing to keep in mind is the infamous Murphy’s Law – “If it can go wrong, it probably will.”
Luckily, the purpose of a JSA is to work to keep those wrong things from happening. That is the next step.
Implement Hazard Controls
Once you identify the hazards in each job step, decide how workers will be protected. The hierarchy of controls gives you five options to consider, starting with removing the hazard itself:
- Elimination: Remove the hazard. For example, assemble a component on the ground instead of having employees do the work at height.
- Substitution: Replace a hazardous material or process with a less hazardous one. For example, use a cleaning product with fewer harmful fumes when it can do the job.
- Engineering controls: Put a physical barrier between the worker and the hazard. Machine guards and local exhaust ventilation are two examples.
- Administrative controls: Change how the work is performed. Written procedures, training, warning signs, and limits on exposure time fall into this group.
- Personal protective equipment (PPE): Use equipment such as safety glasses, gloves, or respirators to protect workers when exposure remains.
Start with controls that remove or reduce the hazard at its source when possible. PPE may still be needed, but it depends on workers using it correctly each time. Record the controls you select in the JSA, explain them to the crew, and check that they work during the job. If the task or work area changes, review the JSA again.
JSA Examples
Here are some job safety analysis examples online that are straight from OSHA. Looking through how other managers have organized the process in the past can help you tailor your own in a way that works best for your own personal workflow.
Let Safety by Design Guide Your JSA Creation Process
As you work to properly follow all the rules from OSHA, a JSA can be a helpful tool. This article has some initial JSA guidelines, but you may need more help. A great option for more extensive learning from safety companies in Houston like Safety by Design. You’ll learn from us and our many years of experience in the field of safety.
Contact us today to learn more about staying safe and compliant!
