What are the five steps to risk assessment?
The Health and Safety Executives (HSE) advises employers to
follow five steps when carrying out a workplace risk Assessment:
Step 1: Identify hazards, i.e. anything
that may cause harm.
Employers have a duty to assess the
health and safety risks faced by their workers. Your employer
must systematically check for possible physical, mental, chemical and biological
hazards.
This is one common classification of
hazards:
- Physical:
e.g. lifting, awkward postures, slips and trips, noise, dust, machinery,
computer equipment, etc.
- Mental:
e.g. excess workload, long hours, working with high-need clients, bullying,
etc. These are also called 'psychosocial' hazards, affecting mental health
and occurring within working relationships.
- Chemical:
e.g. asbestos, cleaning fluids, aerosols, etc.
- Biological:
including tuberculosis, hepatitis and other infectious diseases faced by
healthcare workers, home care staff and other healthcare professionals.
Step 2: Decide who may be harmed,
and how.
Identifying who is at risk starts
with your organization’s own full- and part time employees. Employers must
also assess risks faced by agency and contract staff,
visitors, clients and other members of the public on their premises.
Employers must review work routines
in all the different locations and situations where their staff are employed.
For example:
- Home
care supervisors must take due account of their client's personal safety
in the home, and ensure safe working and lifting arrangements for their
own home care staff.
- In a
supermarket, hazards are found in the repetitive tasks at the checkout, in
lifting loads, and in slips and trips from spillages and obstacles in the
shop and storerooms. Staff face the risk of violence from customers and
intruders, especially in the evenings.
- In
call centers, workstation equipment (i.e. desk, screen, keyboard and
chair) must be adjusted to suit each employee.
Employers have special duties towards the health and safety of young workers, disabled employees, night workers
, shift workers, and pregnant or breastfeeding women.
Step 3: Assess the risks and take
action.
This means employers must consider
how likely it is that each hazard could cause harm. This will determine whether
or not your employer should reduce the level of risk. Even after all
precautions have been taken, some risk usually remains. Employers must decide
for each remaining hazard whether the risk remains high, medium or low.
Step 4: Make a record of the
findings.
Employers with five or more staff
are required to record in writing the main findings of the risk assessment.
This record should include details of any hazards noted in the risk assessment,
and action taken to reduce or eliminate risk.
This record provides proof that the
assessment was carried out, and is used as the basis for a later review of
working practices. The risk assessment is a working document. You should be
able to read it. It should not be locked away in a cupboard.
Step 5: Review the risk assessment.
A risk assessment must be kept under
review in order to:
- ensure
that agreed safe working practices continue to be applied (e.g. that
management's safety instructions are respected by supervisors and line
managers); and
- Take
account of any new working practices, new machinery or more demanding work
targets.
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