Risk Assessment

To achieve a safe and healthy working environment, employers must assess the risks to employees and other people who would be affected while at work.  Measures to control these risks must be established to meet legal requirements. Where there are 5 or more employees risk assessments and all significant findings must be written down.

Risk management involves you, the employer, looking at the risks that arise in the workplace and then putting sensible health and safety measures in place to control them. By doing this you can protect your most valuable asset, your employees, as well as members of the public from harm. During 2004/05, 220 people were killed and over 150,000 were injured at work because of a failure to manage risk.

Risk assessment, whilst sounding complex, is in actual fact quite simple. Each of us makes an assessment of risk on a daily basis, for example when crossing the road. Every time we cross the road, we make our own split second assessment as to whether it is safe or not. If we decide that the risk is too great, we will decide to wait and use a pedestrian crossing which is a dedicated control measure to stop the traffic, allowing us to safely cross the road.

HSE NI has published Five Steps to Risk Assessment to help you. Remember this is not the only way to do a risk assessment, there are other methods that work well, particularly for more complex risks and circumstances. Click here to donwload the document.

REMEMBER:

A 'hazard' means anything that can cause harm e.g. fire, blocked fire exit.

A 'risk' means the chance, (high, medium or low) of someone being harmed by a hazard.