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How To Conduct a Job Hazard Analysis: Steps, Tips and Common Challenges

A job hazard analysis (JHA) is not just a checklist of tasks and hazards; it is a structured way to understand where serious risk can emerge in daily work. When approached strategically, a JHA helps organizations move beyond surface-level observations to identify the conditions and exposures that increase the likelihood of workplace incidents. This matters because hazards are often embedded in routine work and normalized over time. Together, we’ll look at the main steps in completing a job hazard analysis.

How should you conduct a job hazard analysis?

While the exact steps may vary based on job task and environment, the following can be used as a basic guide for carrying out a job hazard analysis:

  1. Involve your employees. When you involve your employees in the hazard identification process, you ensure that they feel ownership over the process. They’re experts and know the hazards of their jobs better than anyone else. Their input will help you minimize gaps and empower them to engage in tasks safely.   
  2. Conduct a preliminary job review. Discuss the known hazards in the work environment and surroundings with employees. If any of the hazards discussed pose an immediate danger, don’t hesitate to act. You can conduct a JHA on the task in question later. If you can brainstorm with your employees about how to control hazards before the JHA and implement a solution, they’ll see that you’re committed to their health and safety. This will have the added benefit of helping you focus your JHA on hazards that are not as easy to identify.   
  3. Review your incident history. If you’re struggling to determine which risks to analyze, reviewing your company’s documented incidents – i.e., near-misses, accidents and accidents with loss – may help you identify jobs that require analysis.   
  4. Determine which jobs require a JHA first. Rank jobs from highest to lowest risk. If you’re finding it difficult to rank jobs, check the list under the section labelled “When should you conduct a JHA?”  
  5. Break down your job into component steps or tasks. Observe an employee as they perform the job and record each step—on video if possible. Aim to gather enough information to describe each job in detail. Review the job steps with other employees to make sure you’ve included each significant component.  
  6. Review your process. Review the steps you’ve listed. 
  7. Document findings. Consistently document relevant findings from the analysis. Have discussions with your employees on how to eliminate or reduce these. Make plans and implement them.   

Helpful tips for developing your JHA

Even well-intentioned job hazard analyses can fall short if they are overly broad, unclear or too complicated. Keeping these fundamentals in mind will help ensure your organization gets the most out of your JHAs.
  • Tip #1: When choosing jobs to analyze, keep the scope manageable. “Build an engine,” for example, might include several hundred smaller tasks performed over the course of days or weeks, whereas “top off fluids” is one task with 6 or 7 smaller components.   
  • Tip #2: Ensure the number of components in a task stays under 10. If the task can’t be broken down into 10 steps, it may mean that your company should reassess the process. Another possibility is that your list is too granular.  
  • Tip #3: Make sure your documentation is engaging and readable. Be specific. Avoid technical jargon and acronyms your audience might not recognize. If you’re not sure, ask the audience to review it and let you know if they can understand it.   
  • Tip #4: Don’t just list your hazards. Instead, make sure to include the potential consequences associated with each. Your audience may not be able to guess the possible consequences and describing them will support the risk ratings that result from the analysis. For example, instead of “cluttered areas,” write “cluttered areas may result in a trip or fall.”   
  • Tip #5: Make sure your controls specify how and when to perform actions. For example, write “allow engine to cool before cleaning” rather than “be careful when cleaning engine.”  

Common challenges in conducting a JHA  

While the steps in the JHA process appear easy to follow on paper, challenges often arise during the actual process. Here are three of the most common challenges you may face as you conduct your JHA: 

  1. Large amounts of information can lead to confusion. To be a success, the JHA requires handling large amounts of information. Even today, most health and safety professionals use paper templates to record the JHA process and only digitize the results. In addition, different departments within one company may record information in different formats. Double-entry mistakes are common. In these conditions, it can be tricky to ensure risk controls are implemented – or even that a JHA has been completed in the first place.  
  2. State, local and federal regulations can differ. Many U.S. states require companies to use specific forms to document JHAs. States also have their own safety standards and regulations that companies must meet. If your company is international or global, stricter regulations may apply in some regions or countries, and ensuring that all regulations are met can be difficult.  
  3. Information may be inconsistent. Inconsistent information and inaccurate data collected from disparate sources and systems can affect your JHA. The volume of information can be overwhelming, and if your company has job sites in different states or countries, the standards and requirements for those documents—and for health and safety in general—may differ.   

Implementing a JHA software solution as part of your company’s wider health and safety software can help eliminate some of these challenges. EHS software can encourage greater hazard awareness, support legal and regulatory compliance and provide education and training on the JHA process as well as the proper methods of conducting the job and any hazards involved. 

Benefits of digital Job Hazard Analysis tools

Digital job hazard analysis tools make it easier to turn this into a consistent, repeatable process. This allows organizations to identify patterns, prioritize higher-risk work and ensure controls are clearly defined and applied across operations. Other benefits of JHA software include:

  • Consistently document JHAs using uniform templates across your organization  

  • Record job tasks on a phone or tablet in the field for quicker review 

  • Clearly define hazard and control measures for each step  

  • Add supporting information for each hazard (e.g., photos) for more detailed analysis

  • Add a risk rating for each step to highlight high-risk steps that require attention 

  • Create a centralized view of ongoing actions for review and approval 

  • Easily share reports with all relevant staff members

  • Help ensure the completion of actions, implementation of controls and delivering of reminders

  • Reduce overall time spent with a fully digital process

  • Integrates JHAs with other aspects of health and safety management such as hazard identification, incident management and more  

Remember, employees in low-risk industries often overlook common hazards and risks. The JHA is a multipurpose health and safety tool that will help your company identify, document and reduce the risks associated with the jobs your employees perform daily. Implementing software can help your company conduct an efficient and effective JHA.  

To learn more about job hazard analyses, check out our other helpful resources:

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About the author

Team Evotix

This article was developed by Evotix’s team of health and safety professionals. With backgrounds across EHS&S, our experts collaborate to share practical insights and proven strategies to help organizations strengthen their EHS&S programs.

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