‘Why do we do risk assessments and what happens to them?’ wasn’t a question I expected when I spoke to a new employee in a client’s office the other day. We can sometimes forget that for every experienced employee there are a number who haven’t come across the principles of health and safety management and its equally important to instruct them as it is to refresh the knowledge of long-standing employees.
The management system framework for health and safety, ISO45001, calls for hazard identification. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Well, it is but so too is the mechanism around risk assessment and joining them both together to prevent harm. Helping employees understand ‘what and why’ is the beginning, and an important step, in managing health and safety.
At the other end of the scale there are those employees who see risk assessments as just another task to be completed, again perhaps not fully appreciating the importance of these vital documents that are living, dynamic and require continual consideration in the pursuit of safe workplaces.
In fact, it’s easy to complete a risk assessment, write it up, file it and move on. Maybe it gets a task done, perhaps it even contributes to compliance but does it actually help?
If you want risk assessments to truly contribute to health and safety two things are essential.
1. Risk Awareness
Across the business, people need tools and the confidence to contribute to risk identification. How to report risk is one element but understanding ‘what risk looks like’ and knowing their view will be valued and considered fully without reprisal or criticism.
Health and Safety Managers can’t possibly know or see everything in the organisation, those working in the process know prevailing and new risk if we can help them to identify it. A risk -aware culture provides insight from those that know best, the workers closet to the risk.
2. A robust and repeatable risk process
Risk assessment should be simple, clear, and easily understood. Methodology should employ likelihood and severity in consideration of a risk associated with a particular hazard, with defined acceptance criteria around the results of the risk assessment. Consideration of controls and their use may highlight how effective they can be in controlling the risk or may highlight the need for consideration and review of more complex control solutions available.
Accountability and momentum can be ensured through assigning risk owners and engaging experts.
It doesn’t have to be complicated, we just need to share our knowledge, ensure those most at risk are protected and get the message across, let’s stop bad things happening.
