Poor environmental conditions

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 workers experiencing stress due to poor environmental conditions include:

• work that exposes workers to excessive or irritating noise or vibration (e.g. from poorly maintained machinery or equipment)
• work that involves exposure to unmanaged biological or chemical hazards (e.g. health care workers with insufficient PPE)
• working under low, very bright or flickering lighting
• work performed in extremes of temperature or where workers are exposed to poor air or water quality
• working near unsafe machinery or uncontrolled hazardous substances.

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 poor environmental conditions are 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, including how people interact
• 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 exposure to poor environmental conditions, 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:
  • eliminate exposure to poor environmental conditions for workers where there is no operational need for them to be in the environment
  • ensure workers can access clean, safe and accessible work environments that are in good working order (e.g. first aid, toilets, drinking water, air quality, appropriate temperatures)
  • design and maintain plant, equipment and work environments to eliminate risks associated with stressful environmental hazards (e.g. stressful vibration, lighting, nuisance noise, thermal discomfort, poor air quality, biological or chemical hazards).

  If you are unable to eliminate the hazard, you must identify ways to ensure you are managing it in a way that minimises risks to health and safety.

• 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:
  • physically isolate unsafe machinery, hazardous substances, and work environments with poor air quality (e.g. hazardous dust), water quality or uncontrolled biological hazards (e.g. blood, bodily fluids, or infectious pathogens) from workers and visitors.
• 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 appropriate PPE and resources are provided to workers. In addition to other control measures, utilise PPE to minimise residual risk (e.g. use face shields where workers are at risk of exposure to infectious viruses and spitting is a risk, or hearing protection if nuisance noise cannot be eliminated).
  • Ensure workers are trained in work systems to manage risk associated with stressful environmental hazards.
  • Ensure systems are in place for workers to report the presence of poor environment conditions that may create a stress response.

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 exposure to poor environmental conditions.

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.