Low job control:
- means workers have little control or say over their work, and little involvement in the decisions that affect them and their work
- includes inflexible start/finish times and breaks, unpredictable work hours and employment contracts (such as casual or labour hire workers or rolling term contracts)
- examples include excessive monitoring of work and breaks, needing permission for routine or low-risk tasks, or supervisors not having the authority to do their job well.
Identify and assess the risks
To learn if there is low job control in your workplace (or the potential for it) look at everything from the work environment to work tasks, how they’re carried out, and the way work is designed and managed.
- Consult your workers. They may tell you they feel stressed, fatigued, undermined or frustrated. They may raise concerns about work processes or decision making. Talk with your health and safety reps and committee too.
- Observe work and behaviours. Work taking longer than expected, excessive paperwork or customer frustration can be caused by low job control.
- Review information such as overtime records, time off, injuries, incidents and near misses, and workers compensation claims.
- Use surveys and tools. If you have more than 20 workers may find the People at Work psychosocial risk assessment tool useful. Head4Work is suitable if you have 20 or less workers(see Psychosocial hazards resources).
- Have a way for workers to report their concerns, and treat these seriously and respectfully. That will encourage reporting and help you fix the problem.
- Identify other hazards present and consider them together. Hazards can interact and combine to create new, changed or higher risks. For example, low job control may create a higher risk in workplaces with high job demands if workers cannot take breaks or change tasks to manage fatigue.
Consider how long, how often and how severely workers are exposed to hazards. The longer, more often and worse the exposure to low job control, the higher the risk that workers may be harmed.
Practical control measures
Here are some ideas for control measure that can help you prevent and manage low job control.
Do | Don’t |
Match workers’ level of autonomy to their role and skills: for example, give supervisors more decision making power than junior workers | Expect workers to work longer hours than rostered without consulting with them in advance |
Have approval processes that balance risks and efficiency: for example, streamline decision making for low risk or routine tasks | Dictate how workers are to do their work tasks; provide some autonomy in decision making wherever possible |
Give workers control over their workflow: allow workers to switch tasks or pause machine paced work to manage their fatigue | |
Plan any regular additional hours in advance with workers: for example, be upfront about extra hours during peak season | |
Promote work-life balance by allowing for flexibility | |
Consult with workers on the work and any changes. Discuss work challenges and solutions during team meetings | |
Consult with workers in making decisions about the way they do their work | |
Allow workers to participate in the decisions making processes about issues that affect their work | |
Conduct performance reviews, as this can allows workers to have input into the way they do their work | |
Provide opportunities for skill development |
Review your control measures
You must review your control measures to check they are working as planned. If your control measures aren’t managing the hazard or is creating new risks, you must make changes.
Get feedback from those affected by the changes, and include them in any modifications to their workplace or work routines. Look at your incident records to see if numbers are going down.
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Rights and responsibilities
Rights and responsibilities