Principles of good work design are a key element of the Safe Work Australia members collaborative project Good Work through Effective Design. This project contributes to the Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2012-2022 and the national action area Healthy and Safe by Design. Particular focus has been placed on achieving the strategic outcome of 'eliminating or minimizing risks and hazards by ensuring all work, work processes and systems are well designed'.

Comcare and Workplace Health and Safety Queensland have been tasked with phase one of the Good Work through Effective Design project, to produce a set of principles for good work design. Phase two of the project is to promote good work and effective design, through case studies, education and other guidance materials.

‘Good work’ is healthy and safe work where the hazards and risks from the work have been eliminated or minimised, as far as reasonably practicable, through the process of design. Good work is designed to manage the structure of tasks, demands, supports, and work processes to optimise human performance, organisational productivity and job satisfaction.

When making decision about work tasks, activities, and responsibilities, there are typically four interrelated elements that are important. These are:

• physical elements—aspects of the work environment or context that creates physical or physiological demands on the human body, for example physical hazards, chemical hazards and biological hazards.


• biomechanical elements—aspects of the work that include hazardous manual tasks and the biomechanical risk factors that leads to musculoskeletal disorders, for example force, vibration and movement.


• cognitive elements—aspects of the work that create demands on the human mental capacity, for example attention, mental workload and complexity.


• psychosocial elements—social, psychological, and organisational aspects of work that place demands on human capacities, for example work demands, job control, supervisor/peer support, role variables, managing relationships, rewards and recognition, management of change an organisational justice.

Risk factors are interrelated and interdependent so focusing on one or two factors in isolation will likely be ineffective as a strategy. The interaction amongst elements, and their co-occurrence, means that a holistic approach should be adopted when evaluating work, and when designing solutions.

There are many models that are applied in the context of designing good work. The report reviewed the following key approaches and perspectives from the research evidence: