An Introduction to Risk Assessments

Employers have a moral and legal responsibility to make sure all workers and members of the public are kept safe from any harm or ill-health that might occur as a result of the business’s operations. So in every workplace, risks need to be identified and assessed so control measures can be implemented. When it comes to risk management, risk assessments have an important role to play.

The process of carrying outrisk assessmentscan help you identify hazards, consider the risks they pose and plan effective precautions to reduce or eliminate those risks. Risk assessment findings can then be discussed and communicated with staff and contractors, helping you ensure your workers know which risks they might face during work activities, and the control measures they should implement to minimise risks. Risk assessments can also demonstrate your compliance with health and safety regulations to clients, principal contractors, investors and external auditors.

For businesses with five or more employees, carrying out and recording risk assessments is a legal requirement. But even for smaller firms, risk assessments come with various benefits, so it’s worth completing one even if you’re not legally required to.

If you’re not familiar with risk assessments and you’re wondering how to complete one, this article is the perfect introduction, with everything you need to know.

What Does ‘Risk Assessment’ Mean?

A risk assessment is an examination of work activities in order to identify relevant hazards that could cause harm or ill-health to workers, site visitors or members of the public. Hazards can be anything from potentially dangerous activities (such as working at height, working with or around mobile plant, operating machinery, or manual handling operations), to using hazardous substances, to psychological strain, such as stress.

Once hazards are identified, you’ll need to consider what risks they pose; how they could harm someone, who might be affected, and how likely the risk is. You can then implement control measures proportionate to the severity and probability of risk.

After the risk assessment is complete, it should be written up and made available to workers on all levels of your organisation. So the term risk assessment is used to describe the above process, as well as the resulting document containing the results of the assessment.

How to Carry Out a Risk Assessment

The process of examining and assessing hazards and risks in the workplace can be broken down into thefive steps to risk assessments:

1. Identify the Hazards.
2. Decide Who Might Be Harmed and How.
3. Evaluate the Risks and Take Action to Minimise Them.
4. Record Your Findings.
5. Review the Risk Assessment Regularly.

To identify hazards, you could start by simply walking around the workplace and recording any visual hazards you see. However, you’ll also need to consider dangers that aren’t visible or easy to spot. A good way to find less-obvious risks is to look over incident records to see if there are any patterns. Skim through instruction manuals from workplace equipment — they will usually include any details of risks you should be aware of. Consulting with your workers is an ideal way of identifying hazards, as they’ll often have a clearer idea of the risks they face daily and how to mitigate them.

As for recording your risk assessment findings, you can use arisk assessment templateto make the job faster and easier. You shouldn’t reuse any risk assessments completed by another business. This is because every workplace and work activity is unique and has different hazards and risks. Were you to reuse a preexisting assessment, you wouldn’t be able to determine the best health and safety precautions for your specific activity or workplace.

所以你必须具体、风险评估relevant to the activity or workplace, but that’s not to say once you’ve created the risk assessment, the job is done. You’ll need to review the document regularly, at least once a year or every time changes are made to the activity or within the workplace. This is because every time the activity or work environment changes — maybe you’ve introduced new equipment or procedures or perhaps you’ve had a staffing shuffle — your risk assessment becomes less relevant. As one of the go-to documents about your business’s health and safety arrangements, your risk assessment needs to be kept up to date if it’s going to help you maintain excellent standards throughout your organisation.