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Summary: Stop Work Authority (SWA) empowers employees to halt unsafe operations, fostering a safer workplace. This guide explores its importance, legal aspects, and outlines a 7-step process to effectively implement SWA, ensuring compliance and reducing risks.
As your company grows, it becomes more difficult for supervisors alone to ensure their workers stay safe. However, prioritizing safety is a must no matter how big your company becomes and how many locations you operate out of — it’s both a legal requirement and the ethical thing to do. To create an additional layer of safety, an effective strategy is to use stop work authority (SWA).
With stop work authority, all employees and contractors are responsible for stopping operations for safety reasons. SWA gives workers the authority to halt tasks immediately if they think an activity is posing a threat. This includes when another person is behaving in a way that is putting someone in danger as well as if workers believe conditions are unsafe.
Using stop work authority allows your team to take action as soon as anyone notices a possible hazard and to cease operations before an incident can occur. It means individual workers can call a halt to work without worrying about retaliation, including if stopping work proves unnecessary or they are calling out a superior.
Legal Requirements for Maintaining a Safe Workplace
In every country, there are laws requiring employers to provide a safe work environment that is free from hazards. Although stop work authority is not a legal requirement, it does tie into many other workplace regulations.
For instance, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in the U.S. has no specific standard related to stop work authority, but the concept aligns with the General Duty Clause in the OSH Act of 1970. Plus, it’s useful for qualifying for Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP), which recognize employers who have effective safety measures in place that result in injury rates below the national average.
Any business that operates in an environment where workers could be exposed to hazards should consider implementing an SWA program. For instance, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has identified the following as industries in the private sector as having the highest rates of fatal work injuries:
- Construction
- Transportation and warehousing
- Professional and business services
- Agriculture, farming, fishing, and hunting
- Manufacturing
What to Include in a SWA Program
Businesses should create SWA programs with their specific needs in mind. A program should outline the procedures workers should take as well as the roles of different employees and teams at the company. For instance, you may like to define roles in following way:
- The HR or HSE department — Provide training for the SWA program, maintain documentation around incidents, monitor compliance, and take action if workers are failing to comply or need extra support understanding protocol.
- Senior managers — Ensure the rest of the team is aware of the SWA program, promote adherence, and hold others accountable for meeting their responsibilities. They should also take advantage of any opportunities to show employees that they won’t face negative consequences if they use their stop work authority. Lastly, they may need to resolve conflict around SWA policies.
- Supervisors — Investigate any SWA requests before resuming work. They also create the plan for followup tasks to prevent similar risks in the future.
- Employees and contractors — Use stop work authority whenever they believe it is founded and respect the SWA orders of others, no matter their position in the company.
In addition to roles for team members, a stop work authority program needs to have a clearly-defined procedure for wo
1. Stop
The first step is actually stopping the work, either by communicating with affected workers directly or by telling a supervisor (if one is available and there is no imminent danger). It’s important to encourage everyone on site (including new employees, subcontractors, and visitors) to take action if they believe conditions are unsafe. Stopping the task should mean the hazard becomes unable to cause harm or it should at least prevent the situation from escalating. It’s important that the person stopping the work stays calm and makes it clear that the workers engaging in the task need to stop for safety reasons.
2. Notify
The next step is to communicate the need to stop work to the rest of the team. Typically, this involves telling a supervisor, the safety manager, and any workers affected by the paused work. This step comes immediately after calling a halt to work because it is critical for everyone to know the reason as soon as possible. This will prevent confusion and ensure a formal safety review takes place before work resumes.
3. Investigate
For workers, the SWA protocol ends with the notification stage — but for the company, this is still just the start. Usually, the safety officer or safety team at the company will head the investigation but will seek insights from everyone involved in the incident or near miss, including those who were involved in any processes that led to the situation.
The safety officer will carry out a risk assessment to see what conditions changed to lead to the incident, check what was overlooked in the previous risk assessment, or determine whether workers were behaving inappropriately. The purpose of the investigation is to discover what led to the unsafe situation and determine what the company can do in the future to prevent something similar from happening.
4. Correct
After the safety team has determined what hazard led to the incident, the company will need to take steps to correct it. The action the company takes will depend on the hazard. This could be:
- Repairing equipment
- Securing dangerous materials
- Offering worker training to correct behaviors
- Implementing a new procedure
5. Resume
Only once you’ve corrected the hazard should your team resume work. Most companies include in their policy the caveat that only a supervisor or safety officer may declare that conditions are safe enough to resume the task.
It’s important to note that companies cannot force workers to resume work if these workers disagree with assessment and determine conditions are still unsafe. In such a case, the employer should assign the worker a different task, without any retribution — provided the worker is refusing to carry out the work in good faith. This relates to the 1980 Supreme Court Ruling in the Whirlpool Corp. v. Marshall case. This judgment clarified that workers have the right to refuse work when they have a reasonable concern that they may face injury or death by performing a task.
6. Follow Up
It’s important to ensure corrections become part of long-term work processes going forward. This means following up to check that the risk remains controlled in future. The company may achieve this by implementing safety checks that address the specific hazard identified in the stop work authority call or providing workers with ongoing training, including in stop work authority (especially if other workers around did not use their stop work authority or someone could have stopped the task sooner than actually happened). You should also ask workers for their input around your SWA protocol, including if they have any suggestions to improve it.
7. Educate
Some companies miss the final step in SWA programs, but it is definitely worthwhile including. Educating involves dispersing details about the incident internally to ensure all supervisors, managers, and employees are aware of what happened, how the company corrected the issue, and what the team learned from the experience. This makes an example of how to use stop work authority, gives workers the confidence to use it themselves, and shows workers that the company cares about their well-being.
By using stop work authority, your company will see a number of benefits.
Fewer Accidents
Addressing hazards as soon as you notice them will naturally lead to fewer accidents. This means fewer injuries and a lower risk of fatalities at the workplace.
Less Severe Impact
Stop work authority may be unable to prevent all accidents, but you should find it reduces the impact of the injuries it fails to prevent entirely.
Improved Morale
Witnessing an accident (especially one that is severe or fatal) is traumatic for workers. They may feel guilty that they did nothing to intervene — which is more common if they feel they didn’t have the authority. Stop work authority provides workers with the confidence that they do have the authority to intervene. Plus, fewer accidents occurring means workers are less likely to be in a situation where they witness or are involved in an accident. Both things improve morale and reduce stress.
Empower Employees
Stop work authority allows workers to feel that they are involved in promoting a culture of safety at the company. The sense of responsibility this brings increases the likelihood that they’ll ensure their own actions are safe. The reminder that they are responsible for safety also means they’ll be on the lookout for hazards and may mean they pay attention to something that could otherwise have gone unnoticed. Lastly, it helps develop employees who have the necessary skills to take on leadership positions in the future.
Cost Savings
There are several monetary benefits to reducing accidents, including less sick pay, downtime, and liabilities. One of the biggest savings, though, is in workers’ compensation costs, as insurers tend to offer better rates to companies that don’t have a history of workplace accidents.
Reduce Equipment Damage
Although the main goal of stop work authority is to prevent injuries to workers, it often comes with the added benefit that you avoid damaged equipment. This reduces repair and replacement costs and leads to higher productivity.
Protect the Environment
Some workplace accidents may also have a negative effect on the environment, such as in the case of a chemical spill or fire. Preventing such incidents reduces your risk of fines and helps you maintain a positive image of your company.
In some cases, it may turn out to have been unnecessary to use stop work authority — but it’s still better to be cautious than to risk an accident, due to all the above benefits.
The circumstances of when a company may need to use stop work authority varies widely depending on the industry and even the particular workplace. In all cases, though, it covers everyone at the workplace or job site and anyone may stop the work of anyone else, with seniority having no impact. In addition, stop work authority covers tasks posing any kind of danger — from extremely dangerous to routine precautions.
The following are some examples of when stop work authority may apply:
- Someone notices a hazard that could lead to an explosion, a trip, slip, or fall, electrocution, or exposure to a dangerous substance.
- A worker or visitor enters an area where it is unsafe to be.
- Someone is not wearing appropriate PPE.
- A worker is behaving unsafely, such as by using power-operated equipment inappropriately or opening a machine that has not been locked out properly.
- It is apparent that an employee is unaware of the correct procedure.
- A crane is lifting a load above people.
- An odor in the air indicates there is a gas leak.
- A ladder is improperly secured.
- There is any type of fire hazard, including a flammable object placed near a heat source.
- An alarm sounds.
- Machinery is malfunctioning.
- Conditions become too dangerous for work, such as in the case of extreme weather conditions or insufficient lighting.
- There is a chemical spill.
- Equipment is too worn or damaged for use.
- There is an emergency.
Depending on the situation, it may be necessary to cease work on the entire site or just on an individual task.
Tips for Implementing a SWA Program
For a stop work authority program to be effective, it’s crucial that everyone on your team is aware of its existence and how it works, including their responsibilities. There are a few things to do to improve the chances that your SWA program is successful.
Communicate the Policies
Make sure everyone on your team understands what they need to do to utilize their stop work authority and what steps the company will take afterward. Be clear about what kinds of situations call for stop work authority (using examples specific to your industry) and that everyone is obligated to halt work if they believe conditions are unsafe.
Provide Clear Guidelines Around When SWA Is Necessary
When deciding if a situation calls for the stop work authority protocol, workers should ask themselves three questions:
- How likely is it that the hazard will cause an accident (or damage equipment or the environment)?
- How severe could the outcome be?
- Is it possible to mitigate the risk with minimal intervention or will risk mitigation require a more extensive strategy?
If workers determine that there is a significant risk (medium to high probability of an accident or medium to high severity of the outcome) and if pausing the work would be effective at controlling the risk, they should use the stop work authority protocol.
Address Concerns
Some workers may be worried about retaliation or other negative consequences. For instance, they may be concerned that:
- They’ll be ridiculed for using their stop work authority, especially if it turns out to have been unnecessary.
- They’ll get a coworker in trouble for notifying others of the worker’s unsafe practices.
- The person behaving unsafely has more experience.
- Stopping work will have a negative impact on productivity.
- If no one else is saying anything, it must mean there is no problem.
- They’ll be speaking out against practices that have existed at the company since before they started working there.
You should address such concerns in your stop work authority policy, reassuring workers that safety comes first and reminding them that they have an obligation act.
Offer Training
For team members to be able to call out unsafe situations, they need to be able to identify hazards and calculate risks. Provide comprehensive safety training for all new hires and contractors and offer refreshers for current workers, especially after incidents or near misses that reveal that they lack knowledge.
Discuss Overriding a SWA Call
Something specific to include in training is whether a supervisor can override a stop authority call. As you will have noticed in the above seven steps, this shouldn’t be a possibility. In fact, it is dangerous to allow this because the supervisor may have misunderstood or failed to notice what the worker has identified as being unsafe. All SWA calls should go through the full procedure, which means carrying out an investigation before work resumes.
Ensuring Contractors Adhere to SWA
If you’re using contractors, you may need to take extra steps to ensure personnel understand stop work authority. In addition to providing training, it’s beneficial to work with contractors who are vetted and are unlikely to pose a safety risk themselves.
You’ll find just such contractors when you use Remote People. Find talent wherever you need it in the world with our international staffing solutions.
Andrew (Drew) joined the Remote People team in 2020 and is currently Director, Regulatory Affairs. For the past 13 years, he has been a trusted advisor to C-Suite executives and government ministers on international compliance and regulatory issues. Drew holds a law degree from the University of Otago, a PhD from the University of Sydney, and is an enrolled Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand.