Part 3 — Work design

The importance of good work design

Work design is the process of planning and structuring work tasks, activities, relationships, and responsibilities at the workplace.

Good work design can help reduce slips, trips and falls by creating safer physical environments and logical workflows, such as using slip-resistant surfaces, minimizing floor-level changes, ensuring adequate lighting, providing sufficient storage to keep walkways clear, and designing tasks to prevent fatigue or rushing.

Good work design minimises the physical and thinking demands of the work required to reduce the risk of people losing their balance when moving around the workplace.

Poor work design can lead to high physical and thinking demands which can increase the risk of fatigue. Further information on Work-related fatigue is available on the WorkSafe website.

Fatigue

It is important to consider fatigue in work design because it significantly increases the risk of accidents, physical and mental health injuries.

Fatigue is an acute and/or ongoing state that leads to physical, mental or emotional exhaustion and prevents people from functioning safely.

Employers have a duty to identify and manage fatigue-related risks through effective work design, which includes managing schedules, task demands, work environment, and employee consultation to ensure a safe and healthy workplace. For example, for high job demands provide plant, machinery and equipment to reduce physical demands and prevent fatigue.

Fatigue impairs physical and thinking functions essential for maintaining dynamic balance and safely navigating the workplace, directly increasing the likelihood of an incident.

Fatigue increases employees’ risk of slips, trips and falls by:

• reducing alertness and focus
• slowing reaction times
• impairing coordination
• impairing judgement and decision-making
• decreasing situational awareness
• reducing ability to concentrate.

Fatigue-related risks to slips, trips and falls include:

• poor footing
• increased tripping risk
• difficulty maintaining balance
• rushing.

Load handling

Load handling tasks such as carrying, pushing or pulling loads while walking increases physical demands and can impact on safe movement around the workplace.

If you lift, lower, push, pull, carry or move something or someone, you may be doing hazardous manual handling. It’s the biggest cause of injuries in Victorian workplaces.

Load handling can affect employees when they are:

• unable to clearly see where they are walking, for example, when handling tall, wide or bulky loads
• doing a task that requires carrying, especially with 2 hands, as this limits normal trunk movements and reactions when losing balance
• carrying items that do not allow for a hand free to grasp a rail, or break a fall on stairs or ramps
• pushing or pulling trolleys, especially on slopes, as this requires greater grip or traction between footwear and the walking surface to prevent slips.

The further people carry heavy things, the more likely they are to slip, trip, or fall. This risk gets even higher when walking on stairs, slopes, ramps, or surfaces that are wet, muddy, or not flat.

Reduce slips, trips and falls risks for load handling while walking by minimising the physical demands and distance involved. Ways to do this include:

• ensuring pathways are clear for moving loads from one place to another
• using assistive equipment like a trolley, an elevator or carry smaller loads to improve handling of very heavy or bulky loads particularly over a longer distance, on uneven surfaces or on stairs
• using powered devices to eliminate or reduce force that employees need to exert —which can reduce the challenge to maintain balance
• reviewing the size, type of trolley wheels to improve pushing, pulling and manoeuvring loads
• minimising transporting or handling of loads outdoors in wet weather, over muddy or uneven surfaces
• minimising pushing loads up inclines
• keeping one hand free when using steps and stairs, to be able to grab the handrail or break a fall if balance is lost
• planning and scheduling work to reduce the need for employees to rush as well as reduce fatigue and tiredness.

For more information on how to reduce risks associated with load handling, refer to Compliance code: Hazardous manual handling.

Distractions

When employees are busy or focused on work tasks, it's easy to become distracted and miss potential dangers like wet floors or obstacles on the ground. This lack of attention can cause a slip, trip, or fall, and it can also lead to mistakes when working.

Distractions that can affect an employee doing tasks and walking include:

• environmental distractions like loud noises, flashing lights or moving in crowded or busy areas
• visual distractions, for example, flickering or distracting light, attention-grabbing posters or displays
• carrying out another activity at the same time as walking, for example, checking a mobile phone
• poor work design resulting in clarity of what needs doing or excessive workloads that creates fatigue and inattention due to long shifts with not enough rest breaks.

Reduce distraction on employees by:

• minimising distracting activities while walking such as checking mobile phones
• minimising visual distractions where there is a high risk of slips, trips and falls, for example. fix flickering lights near ramps, remove attention grabbing displays at the top of stairs
• minimising any loud noise in high-risk areas, for example, by installing doors to contain noise
• reviewing fatigue management and work demands.

Interaction with other employees

Interactions with colleagues in congested workplaces, like where hospital patients are walking or in a busy restaurant can:

• draw attention away from walking safely
• increase the physical demands required to move around others
• reduce walkway space, where materials or objects are present on the walkways
• create additional hazards, for example, activity of others encroaching into the walkway.

Ways to reduce slips, trips and falls risks when interacting with others include:

• minimising congestion in the work area, by removing unnecessary furniture or equipment in the work area and scheduling tasks so there are less people in the one work area at the same time
• using accessways or routes that are well maintained
• planning for adequate space to move around, for example. walking hospital patients through areas with greater available space
• clearly communicating expectations when working with others to maintain safe accessways. For example, communicating early, site expectations and standards such as accessways are to be kept clear of stored material and trailing cords and walkway markers are not to be changed.

Production demands and pay incentives

Production demands and pay incentives, such as ‘finish and go’ policies or per piece payment, can increase time pressures on employees to complete their tasks, encouraging them to increase their pace of work.

Production demands and incentives can lead employees to:

• take short cuts such as using unsafe routes rather than the maintained designated route
• rush or walk quickly, which can cause a loss of balance
• carry, push or pull greater loads than planned to save time
• reduce their attention, impacting on their ability to detect hazards on their walking path
• feel they are under a lot of pressure to produce quickly — they might focus so much on finishing their tasks that they don't notice important things happening around them, like potential problems or issues that could cause delays, because their minds are so focused on just getting the job done quickly. They might also not pay attention to information that doesn't seem urgent at the moment.

Ways to reduce the risk associated with production demands and incentives include:

• checking that the pace of work expected allows enough time for employees to use safe accessways, walk without compromising their balance as well as the opportunity to detect and avoid any hazards in their path of travel
• designing work to minimise multiple handling and the of use mechanical aids to reduce physical demands and time
• improving workflow, for example, by
  • delivering building supplies by truck or crane close to the on-site location to reduce the need for excessive manual handling
  • using mechanical aids, such as roller pallets or wheeled cages to deliver materials, tools and other items
  • locating storage areas close to distribution areas
  • allocating work across the day or week to help employees achieve workloads
  • using systems that minimise the need for storage and additional handling
  • providing instruction and training for these measures
• consulting with employees on how work is done and how time is allocated to ensure workloads are not excessive
• consulting with employees and their health and safety representatives (HSR) when establishing a work rate. Examples of how to set realistic work rates include
  • allowing employees to control the pace of work for critical or physically demanding tasks
  • ensuring the structure of remuneration does not incentivise employees to exceed their capacity to work safely or avoiding breaks when required
• addressing unsafe time pressures and tight deadlines
• reviewing the impact of incentives that increases the pace of work and encourages rushing and shortcuts that affects employee safety.

Scheduling deliveries

How you organize and plan deliveries affects when, where, and how your goods are taken off the truck, put into storage, and moved around at your work site.

Scheduling deliveries strategically, by planning for minimal on-site materials, consolidating shipments, and timing drops during off-peak hours or to designated zones, reduces slips, trips, and falls by keeping walkways clear, preventing clutter build-up, ensuring surfaces stay clean and dry, and allowing for better traffic flow, thus minimizing hazards and worker distraction.

Factors that may impact scheduling deliveries include:

• coordination of multiple people, including:
  • trades
  • contractors
  • material or equipment suppliers
  • transport providers
• availability of material or equipment to be supplied
• availability of assistive equipment such as trolleys, hoists or cranes
• impact of weather and other delays
• the work required before the next stage can be started.

Difficulties in scheduling deliveries can lead to blocked accessways, double handling, increased distances required to manually handle items and possible damage to material. Loss of time from these difficulties can increase time pressures to complete the work.

Ways to reduce the impact of difficulties with scheduling deliveries include:

• reviewing the work schedule to plan for current and upcoming work
• consulting and working with other operational areas and with other relevant duty holders. For example, consultation between the principal contractor and sub-contractors on progress and timing of work to:
  • coordinate work activities
  • plan and organise access to assistive equipment
  • locate a suitable area for delivery and storage of goods that is close to the area of use and does not interfere with safe access for employees
  • ensure access for mechanical aids, such as the use of loading bays for construction of multi-level buildings
• providing an alternate safe access route if materials block accessways
• being up to date with the weather forecast that may impact the schedule
• factoring in possible delays for the completion of work and having alternate plans, to manage any impact other activities or accessways at the workplace. Examples may include:
  • A delayed concrete pour due to formwork problems and the pump not working, resulting in a concrete truck blocking pedestrian accessways. It impacted on other delivery trucks waiting to unload and had to sit behind the concrete truck. To maintain a safe system of work and to keep access open, plan for a parking area just off site and mark this area with traffic cones or barriers and provide traffic control during this delay
  • Use hired mobile plant while on site for unloading materials rather than unloading trucks by hand.