A risk assessment refers to the process of identifying, evaluating and understanding potential risks and hazards in the workplace. If you employ five or more people in your company, you are bound by law to conduct thorough assessments and record all your findings. You also have a duty to share the results with your employees.
Conducting a risk assessment procedure is a complex task that should also involve your staff. You must focus on valuable facts and information so that you paint a realistic picture of the situation within your business. The owner of a company has an express responsibility for ensuring the assessment is carried out correctly and effectively.
Identify the risks
The first and most important aspect is to identify what the hazards are. You cannot start plans to remedy inadequate processes or smooth over things that aren’t going well if you aren’t aware they’re there. There are two main categories, internal and external risks. The first category includes the fiscal health of your business, the software and hardware employed in the workplace, as well as the human factor, namely the choices your employees make.
The external risks include the outside market forces determining the way in which you run your business, the impact of the physical location on your company, which comprises traffic, climate and weather conditions, and, naturally, the competition. You’ll obviously have more control over the internal concerns rather than the external ones, but both should be taken into consideration and have their impact analysed.
Create the documents
After evaluating the risks and determining their importance, you need to create and arrange the data you’ve collected into a document summarising your findings. Make sure the hazards are organised based on the type and that they are in order, from the most pressing to the less likely ones. You should also prepare a response for each of them. Ideally, you should also get input from your staff here. Since this includes their daily tasks and activities, nobody’s better equipped than them to come up with efficient solutions that can minimise the problems.
You can also get specialised templates during your assessment, such as an electrical inspection checklist that includes all items from the simple ones, such as verifying whether or not the power work adequately, to the more complex ones that involve testing outlets and inspecting wiring. Specialised tools help you reduce the risk of potential problems during the inspection and can even enable you to check areas you would have perhaps neglected and left completely unchecked otherwise.
Decide on precautions
The aim of risk assessments is to manage possible dangers and avoid them as much as possible, as well as design adequate precautions that can make the harm less severe in the event that it occurs. In some instances, completely eliminating risks is impossible, depending on the industry in which you operate and the work requirements. However, reducing them as much as possible is still very important.
The measures you can take to reduce risks depend on the sector in which you operate. There are, however, some aspects that increase the likelihood of high-risk situations in the workplace, including:
- Your business is located in a relatively isolated area
- You haven’t invested in the adequate security measures
- You sell high-value goods, including expensive goods and medications
- Your staff is under considerable amounts of pressure, dealing with significant workloads
Evaluating the risks within your business is an ongoing task. You can’t do it once and consider it done forever. As your company changes and evolves, you must keep up with the requirements. Review the previous year’s assessments and determine which have increased and which haven’t. Continuous assessments are the best thing if you’re looking to keep your company as safe as possible.
