Low role clarity

The first step is to identify hazards in your place of work. This means looking at everything from the work environment to work tasks, how they’re carried out, and the way work is designed and managed.

Typical situations that may lead to low role clarity include:

• workers have multiple reporting lines and/or supervisors and competing demands associated with these
• workers are asked to undertake a specific task with no instructions or detailed information about task requirements
• work where there is a lack of clarity about what tasks need to be completed, their priority and deadlines
• changing position descriptions and/or areas of responsibility without consultation or discussion
• allocating the same task to two different workers, resulting in duplication of effort.

Sometimes, a worker may avoid reporting concerns because:

• it’s thought to be ‘part of the job’ and nothing can be done about it
• the worker believes that only ‘serious incidents or issues’ are to be reported
• there’s a belief that nothing will happen if they report
• the worker believes they will be blamed for not being able to handle the job
• the reporting process is time-consuming and complex
• the workplace culture encourages “just getting on with it”.

To determine if low role clarity is a potential hazard in your place of work:

• talk with health and safety representatives, health and safety committees and workers
• walk through and inspect your place of work
• review workers’ compensation claims
• refer to industry standards and guidelines
• review the hazard and incident reports, exit reports and complaints.

A risk assessment involves thinking about what could happen if someone is exposed to a hazard (the consequence of exposure) and the likelihood of it happening.

Psychosocial hazards may interact or combine to increase the overall psychosocial risk so need to be considered together.

A risk assessment can help you figure out:

• the severity of a risk
• whether any effective control measures are in place
• what actions you can take to control this risk
• how quickly you should act.

To determine the likelihood that someone will be harmed by low role clarity, ask yourself:

• has it happened before, either in this place of work or somewhere else?
• if it has happened, how often does it happen?

To determine the possible consequences, ask yourself:

• will it cause minor or serious injury, or death?

After the risks have been identified and assessed, you'll need to control them. Risk control measures should be selected on the basis of highest protection and most reliability.

Control measures

• Eliminating the risk
  The most effective control measure is to eliminate the hazard and associated risk, for example establish clear role expectations for individuals, including their role within their immediate work team and the broader organisation.
• Minimising the risk
  If it’s not reasonably practicable to eliminate the hazard, the risk should be minimised by using a range of control measures, for example:
  • avoid making workers accountable to more than one immediate supervisor to reduce potential conflict in work demands
  • avoid placing inconsistent or incompatible demands on workers, and work to identify issues such as duplication, insufficient work instructions, errors, missed deadlines and problems with work task allocation.
• Using administrative controls
  You must also use administrative controls if there is still a risk after you’ve tried to reduce it with other control measures. Administrative controls protect your workers by working in ways that reduce their exposure to a hazard, for example:
  • ensure roles are clearly understood via the provision of training and supervision, and a current role description.
  • ensure that management structures and reporting lines are clearly defined. This can be supported by an organisational chart.
  • you may need to use a combination of these control measures to meet your responsibilities under WHS laws. (Reference to the code with hyperlink for further info).

You may need to use a combination of these control measures to meet your responsibilities under WHS laws. Refer to the Managing the risk of psychosocial hazards at work Code of Practice 2022 for more information.

Risk management should be an ongoing process in your business, and you should review your control measures regularly. Don’t wait until something goes wrong.

In some situations, WHS legislation requires you to review controls.

These are:

• when the control measure is not effective in controlling the risk
• before a change that might give rise to a new risk
• when you identify a new hazard or risk
• when consultation with workers indicates a review is needed
• when the dynamic and complexity of your business changes, for a new supervisor or worker
• after a health and safety representative requests a review.

A review of risk control measures should be undertaken after incidents or complaints involving low job control.

A review of risk control measures can include an examination of:

• the physical work environment
• work systems and procedures
• worker training and information
• the consultation processes in your place of work.