Occupational Health and Safety Act, 1993 (Act No. 85 of 1993)RegulationsErgonomics Regulations, 2018Annexure 1 : Explanatory Notes to Ergonomics Regulations 2019Regulation 7: Risk Control |
The introduction of a sound ergonomics programme will go a long way towards controlling ergonomic risks. However, it is good practice to continually monitor adverse health effects at the workplace, in order to check that the risk control measures are working. There are many cases where problems are still occurring and further steps are needed to solve the problem. The following factors should be taken into account in controlling the risk:
Ergonomic risks should be reduced to the lowest reasonably practicable level through control and prevention measures in the order of priority below:
| 1. | Elimination: The job should be redesigned so that the hazard is removed from the workplace |
| 2. | Substitution: The current task should be replaced with a less hazardous task. It is important to ensure that the new design is less hazardous than the original |
| 3. | Engineering controls: Use equipment or other measures to reduce the risks associated with tasks. Priority should be given to measures which protect collectively over individual measures |
| 4. | Administrative controls: Identify and implement new procedures that will allow work to be done safely |
| 5. | Personal protective equipment: Only once all the previous measures have been tried and shown to be ineffective in controlling risk to a reasonably practicable level, personal protective equipment (PPE) should be considered. When PPEs are used it is important that employees are involved in the fitting and consulted in the selection of fit for purpose PPE |