Hierarchy of prevention and control measures

Introduction

Employers need to assess the risks for their staff, and then preventive measures or control measures have to be derived from this assessment. The types of measures can be classified as: elimination of the hazards (e.g. designing new work processes) and, if that is not possible, minimising and separating the hazards from the workers byi) technical measures (e.g. encasing, exhaust),ii) organisational measures (e.g. only qualified employees are allowed to do specified work),iii) personal measures (e.g. wearing PPE),iv) behavioural measures (e.g. peer-observation).Legislation requires following the hierarchy in order to always select the most effective type of…