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704 Hazard Analysis and Control
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Work Practice Controls

Work practice controls are aimed at reducing employee exposure to hazards that elimination, substitution, warnings, and engineering controls fail to address.

How do you control unsafe behaviors?

Work practice controls work by designing safe work procedures and practices into work. Ultimately, effective they will successfully eliminate the human behaviors that result in most workplace accidents!

Work practice controls are only as effective as the safety management system that supports them. It's always better to eliminate the hazard so that you don't have to rely on worker compliance to protect workers. Here's an important principle that reflects this idea:

Any system that relies on human behavior is inherently unreliable.

To make sure work practice controls are effective in the long term, they must be designed based on solid hazard analysis and sustained by a supportive safety culture. They must then be accompanied by adequate resources, training, supervision, and appropriate consequences. Remember, work practice controls should be used in conjunction with other controls. Now let's look at some examples of work practice controls.

Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.

5-7. Any system that relies on human behavior is inherently _____.