Job Safety Analysis

A job safety analysis (JSA) is a written procedure developed to review work steps and their associated hazards in order to put in place correct solutions to eliminate or minimise the risk of those hazards.

A JSA is sometimes referred to as a ‘job hazard analysis’.

The JSA can also be completed as part of preparing a Safe Work Method Statement which is a written procedure for the high-risk construction work.

Why is a Job Safety Analysis(JSA) important?

A JSA can offer many benefits to a business which includes:

increasing the knowledge of a work process by understanding what each employee should know and how they are to perform their job;
helping to uncover existing and potential hazards and consequence of exposure of the associated to work steps;
helping to outline appropriate control measures to prevent and eliminate hazards;
enabling employees to participate and contribute to the design of a work process thereby improving safety awareness;
standardising work processes based on acceptable safe practices and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE);
improving communication about safety by using the JSA as a continuous training medium;
helping to reduce risks and prevent injuries and incidents at workplaces; and
complying with the occupational safety and health requirements.

When do I need to develop a JSA?

A JSA should be developed for a job that:

has a high potential risk of injury;
has a previous record of accident, injury and near miss;
is new or has been modified as a result of adopting new processes or equipment;
requires multi-steps to complete;
involves repetitive motion;
will be carried out in a new environment;
has been rarely performed or where new people are performing them;
performed under ‘Permit to Work’ conditions;
may be a routine task that requires frequent safety checks; and
requires a high level of safety precaution, for example, involving fire, explosions, chemical spills and creation of toxic or an oxygen deficient atmosphere.

Permit to work: formal written authority for persons usually trade-persons, to carry out work including maintenance on plant, a building or an item of equipment.

The JSA consists of the following steps:

Review the scope of the job in consultation with workers

Once the decision to develop a JSA for a specific job is made, a supervisory person can start the process by seeking input from one or more workers who are familiar with the job. Getting experienced workers involved in the process will assist in uncovering or minimising oversights of the specific hazards. Other important related information about the job should also be reviewed. This includes information obtained from a company’s hazard register, the history of injuries or losses that require repair or replacement of tool or machinery, and information on any near misses.

Identify each task of the job and break it down into individual steps

The job process needs to be broken down into individual steps from start to finish and the steps should be documented in a logical order. A helpful technique to do this is to observe the workers while they are performing the tasks. The recorded steps should be subsequently verified by the workers to confirm their applicability. It is important to describe and record each step briefly. A JSA is not intended to be a work process instruction or a job manual. Providing too much detail on the job steps could lead the JSA being ineffective and impractical.

Identify hazards and assess risks in each step

Once the task has been broken down into steps, the potential hazards associated with each step needs to be identified. The associated risk of each hazard is to be determined on the likelihood and consequences of harm or injury. The risk rating table below can be used as the tool to assess these risks.

Job Safety Analysis