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It is a legal requirement to protect your employees’ health and safety at work. As part of this, you must carry out a workplace risk assessment process in your workplace. Not only is this vital to keep your staff safe but for members of the public who may visit your workplace. Workplace safety assessments can help you prevent accidents, ill-health and potential death from occurring in your workplace. Notably, a workplace risk assessment is not something you as an employer carry out once. Instead, it is a procedure that you will need to review periodically and potentially make further changes to your workplace with control measures for safety risks.
This article will explain workplace safety assessments, also known as workplace risk assessments. It will outline what the law requires you to do, and then it will guide you on how to do this and potential risks to look out for.
Legal Requirements for Managing Risks at Work
As an employer, health and safety law requires you to make sure that you:
- Identify potential hazards in your workplace which could result in injury or illness.
- Assess the likelihood that these could harm a member of staff and how serious this would be.
- Either get rid of the hazard you have identified or, if not possible, control the risk it poses.
If you are an employer with five or more employees, you are legally required to record your significant findings. Importantly, you must record:
- what the hazards identified are;
- how they may cause harm and to whom; and
- the actions you are taking to control the risk caused.
Notably, you do not have to remove all workplace safety risks. However, you must do everything reasonably practicable to protect others from being hurt. In other words, you must assess the level of risk with what you need to do to control it, where you will consider the required money, time and trouble for doing so.
Identifying Hazards in Your Workplace
Finding out what hazards are present in the workplace is the first part of conducting workplace safety assessments. You should identify hazards towards both employees during their work and those who may visit your workplace but are not members of your staff.
Likewise, to determine what hazards are present in your workplace, carefully look around your workplace and think about:
- the way your workforce works;
- what equipment your workforce uses;
- if there are currently any unsafe ways of working;
- if your workforce uses chemicals or substances;
- what the condition of your workplace is;
- what accidents have happened in the past where you may want to check your accident records to remind yourself; and
- workplace activity which only occurs now and then.
Additionally, it is helpful to ask your workforce what they consider hazards.
Examples of elements to consider in your workplace safety assessment are:
- electrical safety;
- fire safety;
- manual handling;
- dangerous substances;
- work which could cause repetitive strain injury;
- work which could cause stress;
- elements that could contribute to the risk of violence;
- elements that could affect the risk of infectious disease;
- risky tasks such as using chemical substances when cleaning; and
- how your workplace is organised such as working hours, lone working or other systems of work.
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Assessing the Risks Presented by Hazards
Assessing the risks presented by hazards in the workplace is the second part of risk assessment at work. To determine what risks the hazards you have identified pose, you will need to think about the level of risk. To do this, you should think about:
- who might be hurt by the hazard;
- the extent to which they might be hurt;
- how you can control this risk; and
- who needs to do it, and when do they need to do it.
Your risk assessment for your workplace should be shared with your workforce. Further, where this consists of over 50 staff, you are expected to place it on your website.
Actions to Control Workplace Risks
When deciding what action to take to control workplace risks, you need to think if you can reasonably eliminate the risk from your workplace. If it cannot be, you should think about controlling it. This will involve looking at what is currently in place to manage it and possibly find ways to improve processes.
Finally, you should put in place the actions you have identified to control the risks in your workplace.
Key Takeaways
The health and safety of those in your workplace is a significant responsibility for you as an employer. One part of this is the legal requirement to carry out risk assessments or workplace safety assessments for your workplace. This requires you to identify the potential risks or hazards, assess the impact they may have and control or get rid of them. Where you employ five or more people, you are also required to keep a record of what you identify in terms of hazards and the risks posed. Risk assessments in the workplace are ongoing, so getting to grips with the procedure and implementing steps will help you carry this out.
If you need help understanding rules about workplace assessments in England and Wales, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.
Frequently Asked Questions
As an employer, you must identify risks to health and safety in the workplace, assess the harm these can cause and to whom, and eliminate them or put in actions in place to control them.
A workplace risk assessment is a process that you as an employer take to identify the risks and hazards in your workplace. You should also assess the harm they could cause and to whom.
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