What this is
What is the difference between a task and a job title here?
What is the difference between a task and a job title here?
Task Name is meant to describe the work itself — for example, "decant 25kg sacks to hopper" — not the role that performs it. A job title can span several distinct tasks with different hazards, and a single task can be performed by several job titles, so pinning an assessment to a title instead of a task loses that granularity entirely.
Why are Physical Demands and Known Hazards captured here rather than only in the risk assessment itself?
Capturing them at the task level means every risk assessment or ergonomic review that references this task inherits the same starting hazard profile, instead of each assessor re-deriving it from scratch. It also means a change to the task's demands — a new machine, a new posture — only needs updating in one place.
What does 'reviewed yearly' mean in practice for a singleton register?
It does not mean the whole register is rebuilt annually. It means each task's Last Reviewed and Next Review Due dates are checked on a rolling basis, and any task whose actual performance has changed — new equipment, new frequency — gets its record updated rather than waiting for a scheduled full pass.
Scope
When is a job and task register required?
This register describes the work, not the place it happens or the person doing it. Recording location or personnel detail here instead of linking to the registers that own them breaks the links every downstream assessment depends on.
Use this template when
- A new task is introduced, or an existing one changes equipment, frequency or physical demands
- A risk assessment or ergonomic assessment needs a stable task reference to attach to, rather than a job title
- The annual review is due and a task's Last Reviewed date needs updating against how the work is actually performed now
- You are running the Master Data and Foundations programme and this is one of its steps
- Training records in KnowTrain need to be tied to the specific task a course covers
Do not use it for
- Site and Location Register, which holds every site, building, area and zone your organisation operates — record where the task happens by linking to Site, not by re-describing the location here.
- Asset Register, which holds every piece of equipment, machine, vehicle and tool you track — link Equipment Used to that register rather than describing the machine inline.
- Worker Profile, which holds a record for each worker, including role, department, site and start date — a task is not a person, even one performed by a single specialist.
- Anything outside General, which belongs in the workspace that owns that process
- Recording the task by job title alone, which is the single most common way this register stops being useful within a year
Compliance mapping
Which ISO 45001 cl.6.1.2 requirements does this satisfy?
ISO 45001 cl.6.1.2 requires a documented process for hazard identification and risk assessment, and this register is the input layer that process draws on rather than reconstructing per assessment. The clauses below map onto the sections a builder actually sees.
| Clause | Requirement | Where it lands |
|---|---|---|
| ISO 45001 cl.6.1.2 | Establish, implement and maintain a process for ongoing hazard identification | Task detail |
| ISO 45001 cl.6.1.2(a) | Consider how work is organised, including routine and non-routine activities | Identification |
| ISO 45001 cl.7.2 | Determine the necessary competence for people whose work affects OH&S performance | Where and who |
| ISO 45001 cl.8.1.1 | Plan, implement and control operational processes to meet requirements | Where and who |
| ISO 45001 cl.7.5.3 | Control documented information, including the procedures that govern a task | Governance |
| ISO 45001 cl.9.1.1 | Monitor and evaluate OH&S performance, including periodic review of controls | Governance |
What it does not cover
- A task entry named after a job title rather than the activity performed, which prevents risk and ergonomic assessments from attaching to the actual physical work.
- Physical Demands left blank on a task involving manual handling, which means no ergonomic assessment method gets triggered for work that clearly needs one.
- Known Hazards not updated after new equipment is introduced, which leaves the register describing a process that no longer exists on the floor.
- Next Review Due left blank or long past, which defeats the annual review cycle the register depends on to stay current.
- Equipment Used pointing at a retired or closed Asset Register entry, which breaks the link a maintenance or ergonomic review would otherwise follow.
Global
Job and Task Register requirements by country
This register has no Country field of its own, but the tasks it describes feed directly into ergonomic and hazard obligations that vary sharply by jurisdiction, and these three carry the most weight.
OSHA General Duty Clause, Section 5(a)(1)
OSHA has no single ergonomics standard, so ergonomic hazards are enforced under the general duty to provide a workplace free of recognised hazards
A task record with well-documented Physical Demands is often the clearest evidence an employer has that a hazard was recognised and addressed, which matters directly if the general duty clause is ever invoked.
CSA Z1004, Workplace ergonomics — A management and implementation standard
CSA Z1004 expects ergonomic hazards to be identified at the task level as part of a documented programme
Physical Demands and Known Hazards on each task entry are close to a direct input for a CSA Z1004-aligned ergonomics programme, rather than a nice-to-have add-on.
ISO 45001 cl.6.1.2
The clause requires hazard identification to consider how work is organised, including routine, non-routine, and how people perform tasks in practice
An auditor checking cl.6.1.2 compliance will look for task-level hazard identification, not job-description-level, and a register organised by title rather than task will not satisfy that expectation.
How to complete it
How to complete a job and task register, step by step
Filling in each field is straightforward. What actually decides whether the register holds up under review is a small set of judgement calls made once and then applied consistently across every task.
Split by distinct physical activity, not by job title or by every minor variation. A workable rule is: if the Physical Demands or Known Hazards genuinely differ, it is a separate task; if they are the same activity performed slightly differently, it is not.
Decide up front whether flagging Lifting, Repetitive motion or Sustained posture automatically queues the task for an ergonomic assessment, or whether that decision is left to a supervisor's judgement. Leaving it ambiguous is how demanding tasks go unassessed for years.
Next Review Due is only useful if something checks it. Confirm whether that check is a person's recurring calendar reminder or a system-driven report, because an unenforced due date behaves identically to no due date at all.
Task Video Reference and Task Photo are optional fields, but a task with meaningful Physical Demands is far faster to reassess later with a short video than with a text description alone. Decide whether that evidence is mandatory for high-demand tasks specifically, rather than optional for all.
What auditors find
Most common job and task register findings
These are the findings that recur most often when a job and task register is audited against how work is actually performed on the floor.
| Finding | Clause | What fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Task Name entries are job titles, not activities | ISO 45001 cl.6.1.2(a) | Rename entries to describe the activity performed, and split any title that covers more than one distinct task into separate rows. |
| Physical Demands left blank on tasks with obvious manual handling | ISO 45001 cl.6.1.2 | Require Physical Demands to be set before a task can move out of draft, rather than leaving it as an optional field that gets skipped under time pressure. |
| Next Review Due dates months or years in the past | ISO 45001 cl.9.1.1 | Run a standing report of overdue reviews and assign it to the supervisor named against each task, rather than relying on someone to notice. |
| Equipment Used links point to Asset Register entries marked inactive | ISO 45001 cl.8.1.1 | Add a check when an asset is retired that flags every task record still linked to it for re-review. |
| Procedure Document link missing on tasks with documented hazards | ISO 45001 cl.7.5.3 | Require a Procedure Document link wherever Known Hazards is non-empty, so the control measure is traceable, not assumed. |
| Typical Crew Size and Frequency inconsistent with what supervisors report verbally | ISO 45001 cl.8.1.1 | Cross-check the register against a floor walk at each annual review rather than trusting the figures entered when the task was first created. |
Case in point
Case in point: the title that hid three tasks
A production site had one register entry for "Line Operator", covering changeover, routine running and end-of-shift cleaning. The ergonomic assessment against that entry captured the routine running posture and stopped there, because that was the task the assessor observed on the day.
Changeover, which involved repeated overhead reaching to reset guarding, never got its own hazard profile because it was never its own task entry. It took a shoulder injury during a changeover, and the resulting investigation, to split the title into three separate task records — the split that should have happened when the register was first built.
The template
The template, field by field
The form exactly as it installs. Every field, option, score and conditional rule is editable, and the links to other templates come with it.
4 sections
- Reference
- FDN-004
- Archetype
- Register
- Record ID
- JOB-2026-000
- Scoring
- None
- Direction
- n/a
- Singleton
- Yes
- Basis
- ISO 45001 cl.6.1.2
- Links
- Referenced by KnowErgo, KnowTrain, Risk Assessment
- Tags
- Master data
- Sections
- 4
- Fields
- 20
- Follow up fields
- 0
- Repeating sections
- 0
- Links out
- 3
Identification
5 fieldsJob Task ID*
Format JOB-000.
The record's own ID. Other templates point at this value.
Status*
- Planned2 pts
- In progress2 pts
- Complete3 pts
- Deferred0 pts
- Open0 pts
- Closed3 pts
- Overdue0 pts
Task Name*
Describe the work, not the job title. This is what Pick Lists display.
Task Category*
Groups tasks for assessment planning.
Frequency*
How often this task is performed.
Where and who
6 fieldsSite*
Site ID*
Links to FDN-001 Site ID
Department*
Typical Crew Size
Equipment Used
Asset ID
Links to FDN-002 Asset ID
Task detail
5 fieldsTask Description*
What the person actually does, step by step at a high level.
Physical Demands
Drives which ergonomic assessment methods apply.
Known Hazards
Task Video Reference
A short video makes assessment far quicker later.
Task Photo
Governance
4 fieldsProcedure Document
Document ID
Links to FDN-008 Document ID
Last Reviewed
Next Review Due
FDN-004 · record IDs look like JOB-2026-000 · Referenced by KnowErgo, KnowTrain, Risk Assessment
Open in KnowellaRun it with agents
From a document you fill in to a programme that runs itself
Building the register once is the easy part. Keeping every task's hazard profile current as equipment and processes change, and making sure the annual review actually happens, is where it slips.
Reads Physical Demands directly to decide which ergonomic assessment method applies to a task, and flags any task with manual handling demands that has never been assessed.
Ties course completions to the specific Task Category and Frequency a worker performs, so training coverage is measured against real work rather than job title.
Pulls Known Hazards straight into risk assessments so a new hazard added here is visible in every assessment that references the task, not just the next one written.
Flags tasks with an overdue Next Review Due, checks Equipment Used links against the Asset Register before they go stale, and holds every proposed update for a supervisor's sign-off.
This template lives in General — control tower. The orchestration layer. Registries and engines every other workspace reads from.
Meet General→Glossary
Job and Task Register definitions and key terms
- Task
- A distinct physical activity someone performs, described by what is done rather than by the job title of who does it.
- Physical Demands
- The set of physical exposures a task involves — lifting, repetitive motion, sustained posture and similar — used to decide which ergonomic assessment method applies.
- Master data
- The reference records — sites, assets, tasks — that other templates read from via Pick Lists, rather than re-entering the same information each time.
- Singleton
- A record type set up once per workspace and maintained over time, rather than raised fresh for every event — one row per task, not one per shift it is performed.
- Frequency
- How often a task is performed, from Continuous to Annually, used to prioritise which tasks get assessed first.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about job and task register
What is the job and task register template based on?+
It is built against ISO 45001 cl.6.1.2, which requires an ongoing process for hazard identification that considers how work is organised, including routine and non-routine activities.
What sections does the job and task register contain?+
Four sections: Identification, Where and who, Task detail and Governance, holding 20 fields in total, 9 of which are required.
How many job and task register records should we have?+
One entry per distinct task, not per job title and not per shift. This is a singleton register maintained over time, referenced by risk and ergonomic assessments rather than raised per event.
Why does the register separate Task Name from Task Category?+
Task Name describes the specific activity; Task Category groups tasks — routine operation, cleaning, maintenance and similar — for assessment planning, so a supervisor can prioritise a whole category rather than reviewing tasks one at a time.
Can the job and task register template be changed?+
Yes. Every field, option and link is editable, including the Task Category and Physical Demands lists, and the Pick List references from other templates come with it.
What happens if a task's equipment is retired in the Asset Register?+
The link in Equipment Used and Asset ID will point at an inactive record, which is a signal the task itself needs re-review — the equipment change may also have changed the physical demands or hazards involved.
Keep going
Related templates and programmes
Industries this is written for
Programmes this belongs to
Used together in Master Data and Foundations
Site and Location Register
Holds every site, building, area and zone your organisation operates
Asset Register
Holds every piece of equipment, machine, vehicle and tool you track
Worker Profile
Holds a record for each worker, including role, department, site and start date
Vendor and Contractor Register
Holds every supplier, contractor and service provider you work with, including their status and approval level
Chemical and Substance Register
Lists every chemical and hazardous substance held on site, with quantity, location and hazard class
Course Catalog
Lists every training course available, with its length, validity period and who needs it
More in Registries
Site and Location Register
Holds every site, building, area and zone your organisation operates
Asset Register
Holds every piece of equipment, machine, vehicle and tool you track
Worker Profile
Holds a record for each worker, including role, department, site and start date
Vendor and Contractor Register
Holds every supplier, contractor and service provider you work with, including their status and approval level
Chemical and Substance Register
Lists every chemical and hazardous substance held on site, with quantity, location and hazard class
Course Catalog
Lists every training course available, with its length, validity period and who needs it
Written and reviewed by
Siddarth Singh
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Knowella
Certified Safety Professional and industrial and systems engineer with more than a decade inside food supply chain, freight and manufacturing operations. This page was written against the current text of the standards it cites, not against secondary summaries of them.
- Certified Safety Professional (CSP), Board of Certified Safety Professionals
- MBA, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
- MS and BS, The Ohio State University, Industrial and Systems Engineering
- Six Sigma Black Belt
Sources and last review. Reviewed 16 August 2026 against:
- ISO 45001:2018 — cl.6.1.2, Hazard identification and assessment of risks
- ISO 45001:2018 — cl.7.2, Competence
- OSHA — Occupational Safety and Health Act, Section 5(a)(1), General Duty Clause
- CSA Z1004 — Workplace ergonomics: A management and implementation standard
This page is general guidance, not legal advice. Confirm requirements with your jurisdiction’s regulator.