Workplace Health, Safety and Wellbeing
Risk management fundamentals
Candidates should know the hierarchy of controls (elimination, substitution, engineering, administrative, PPE) and the risk assessment cycle: identify hazards, assess likelihood and severity, control, record and review. Understand the difference between hazard and risk, near miss and accident, and the duties of employers, employees and contractors. Know incident investigation methods such as root-cause analysis and the Swiss-cheese model of accident causation.
Wellbeing and psychosocial risk
Modern practice extends beyond physical safety to psychosocial hazards: workload, bullying, fatigue, violence and work design. Know models such as Karasek's demand-control model and effort-reward imbalance. Understand absence management, presenteeism, employee assistance programmes and return-to-work planning.
Traps in questions
Beware options that place PPE above engineering controls, or that treat training as a substitute for eliminating a hazard. Questions may confuse near miss (no harm) with accident (harm occurred). Do not assume wellbeing is purely individual resilience - work design matters. Also watch for confusion between statutory reporting thresholds and internal reporting.
Worked example
A hospital ward reports rising needlestick injuries. Rather than retraining staff first, apply the hierarchy: introduce safety-engineered devices (engineering control), then reinforce procedures and training (administrative), with gloves as last-line PPE. Rule of thumb: if a control depends on perfect human behaviour, it ranks below one that removes the hazard.