There are many forms of the Job Safety Analysis (JSA). Some companies call it a Job Hazard Analysis, Activity Hazard Analysis (JHA), Task Hazard Analysis (THA), Job Risk Assessment (JRA), and several other names for essentially the same concept. The concept is to list the steps of tasks, the hazards that may occur, and the ways to lower the risks of those hazards to a level that allows work to progress safely.

Many years ago, I was at a site that had a robust safety program. I’ll give you a hint of where, by saying the only safety slogan that I believe has been effective: “walking is working.” If you heard that, you knew someone was telling you to put your gloves on. If enough injuries occurred on the hand by tripping or falling, the company took action to prevent them (wear gloves while you are working). At this site, even in spite of a well-developed safety program, they kept getting more recordables than they wanted. The JSAs were in place, and people understood them, so what was going on? Were they just writing down the same thing over and over and not really paying attention? The leaders had to do something, so they decided to have everyone write an extensively detailed JSA. The Safety Manager said he wanted to know what size wrench they were going to use on what size bolt. I understand there was pressure on the safety department to do something to stop these injuries. This new JSA method was really like writing a process. After workers did not start working until an hour and some minutes after starting every day for around two weeks, it was abandoned. I have found from traveling and going to many places with various scopes that AHAs are subjective. Many argue it is not enough, or it is too much. It is a matter of balance.

I believe that if anyone watched you work for five minutes, whatever you were doing during that time should be on the JSA in some manner. The important part is identifying all the things that could hurt you and listing them. Then, naturally, the controls to eliminate the risks or reduce them to an acceptable level to perform the task.

The best JSA I ever heard was from a foreman who did not like safety people at all. He went in front of the crew and just lined them out on their individual tasks. He knew the job so well that he stated the associated risks with each task and what actions to take to avoid those risks. Simply put, he knew how to perform that work. He told each of them exactly what to do. I wonder how he would react knowing a safety person thought he was a good safety person.