Identifying and Controlling Hazards
Course 101
Safety Certified Supervisor Series

MODULE FIVE: CONTROLLING HAZARDS

Management Controls

Management controls are aimed at reducing employee exposure to hazards that engineering controls fail to eliminate. Management controls work by designing safe work practices into job procedures and adjusting work schedules. Ultimately, effective management controls will successfully eliminate the human behaviors that result in 95% of all workplace accidents!

Management 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 management controls that tend to work only as long as employees behave. Here's an important principle that reflects this idea:

Any system that relies on human behavior is inherently unreliable.

To make sure management controls are effective in the long term, they must be designed from a base of solid hazard analysis and sustained by a supportive safety culture. They then must be accompanied by adequate resources, training, supervision, and appropriate consequences. Remember, management controls should be used in conjunction with, and not as a substitute for, more effective or reliable engineering controls. Now let's look at some examples of some management controls.

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