Question

How can an employer meet the spirit and letter of the General Duty Clause?

What role does the level of risk play in the degree of effort that an employer might invest in their decision to either eliminate or mitigate (manage) the hazard?

Answer 1

Genral duty clause mandates the employers to keep the workplace free from the recognised hazards which have a potential to cause injury or death to the workers.

The employer, in order to keep the workplace  hazard free, might work proactively to identify all risk events which might cause serious consequences for employees and take all precautionary and protective measures to eliminate the chances of occurrence of those events as much as possible, with assumption of a no compromise policy on the safety and well being of the employees, and do whateever it takes to ensure this..

The nature and level of of risk plays a role in determination of the fact whether the employer would eliminate or mitigate the hazard, and upto what degree. If the conseuences of risk are very serious ( such as loss of life), and it can be eliminated ( such as possibility of a high voltage shock that is almost always lethal)  the employer would invest in eliminating that risk by investing in safety measures, whatever the cost or efforts it may take.  For risks that can't be eliminated, but have serious conseuences ( such as cyclone threat), the employer would take all measures to mitigate the risk through protective measures, insurance etc, to minimise the negative impact of the event, at any cost. For low impact, low occurrence risks, many employers might take a casual approach, not taking the risks seriously, (such as chances of a rainlogging which last happened in 1987, and can be addressed by employing two vacuum pumps.)