We have created this free, in-depth resource on Health and Safety Risk Assessment for you to use and share. If you would prefer an instructor-led video course, check out our Safeti School course here.
So then, why health and safety risk assessment? Risk assessment is one of the fundamental themes of any health, safety or environmental management system.
By assessing the risks to your business, you can make informed decisions on what you need to keep your operations running smoothly and prevent harm to people, the environment and your business. Let's jump into some more detail...
A health and safety risk assessment is simply a careful examination of what could cause harm to people. This helps identify the actions you need to take to prevent injury and ill-health. Watch our 4-minute video for a quick overview.... https://youtu.be/9BJNq_f7OME Risk assessment is not about creating huge amounts of paperwork, but rather about identifying sensible measures to control the risks in your workplace. The complexity of a risk assessment can vary wildly, but for most, it's best to keep it simple.
Risk assessment is often seen as a thankless activity that has to be done, with little real benefit. But why do we have to do it? There are plenty of good reasons that we should risk assessment for our business, including moral, legal and of course, financial. Unfortunately, the term 'health and safety risk assessment' has gained bad press in some quarters due to over zealous approaches to risk management.
In reality, the Health and Safety Executive in the UK clearly states that risk assessments should not be unnecessarily complicated and only focus on the significant hazards. - which makes sense, because you have to be able to effectively communicate the outcomes of them. In the UK, your obligation as an employer is that you must risk assess the work activities that your employees are involved. If you have 5 or more employees, you have to keep a record of any risk assessment that you have done.
The term 'significant hazards' is explicitly used by the HSE. This is vitally important when considering risks. In other words, in the UK, the HSE is explicitly saying that you are not expected to eliminate or control every hazard or activity, regardless of how small or trivial it is. You are not expected to pour resources toward 'everyday hazards'. Nor should you concentrate on hazards that are not specific to the workplace or a by-product of the work activity. With that in mind, let's look at how you might go about doing a risk assessment...
We've created an instructor-led, online course for Risk Assessment. Join us for a step-by-step, interactive tutorial PLUS 1-to-1 coaching session to give you the confidence to carry out Risk Assessment. Try the Free Module here! https://vimeo.com/402963016/9695c6f0e2
Sometimes people get a little freaked out when confronted with the question 'What is risk assessment?'. Let alone being asked to actually do one! But it doesn't have to be overly complex.
Firstly, let's provide some context to the question. If you are an employer, what does risk assessment mean for you? It's written into UK law that employer's must control risk by assessing what might cause harm. They then need to take reasonable steps to prevent that harm from happening. Let's look at a simple the 'HSE Risk Assessment 5 Steps' approach that you can use everyday to carry out risk assessment in your workplace.
HSE Risk Assessment 5 Steps
Ask yourself 'what could harm someone and how?'
Firstly, check accident records to identify any previous workplace injury or illness
Secondly, refer to manufacturer's guidelines for safe guidance on how to operate plant and equipment
We mustn't forget to consider non-routine or infrequent work activities. Watch our Safeti School podcast or video below for more ideas on how to identify hazards in your workplace.
https://youtu.be/wpiSpt7YyPU It is essential to also consider the potential long-term impacts to health e.g. from exposure to noise or dust.
Unless the risk is increased during work activities, 'everyday' risks should not be included. For example, using a kettle to boil water or walking up and down a flight of stairs.
Ask yourself who will be exposed to a particular risk. This might be primarily your own employees. But, there are also other groups of people (or animals!) who may be affected in different ways.
A good example would be the impact of a construction project being carried out in a live hospital environment. Those affected may include patients, staff and the general public, for example.
HSE Risk Assessment: Who can be harmed and how?
If you are carrying out a health and safety risk assessment, it's important to be aware of those within and outside the workforce who may be more vulnerable. When thinking about people who may be at increased risk, the most common examples would be young people, those with medical conditions, the elderly or pregnant women. Identifying 'who might be harmed' provides you with the chance to add specific or additional control measures later in the risk assessment process.
Would you like a free health and safety risk assessment template that aligns with what you will learn in this Beginner's Guide?
If the answer was a resounding yes, you can download our free, editable PDF right here. Don't mention it!
[purchase_link id="11828" text="Purchase" style="button" color="green"] In Steps 1 and 2 you’ve identified where there’s a potential hazard, know who might be in danger and how it might affect them. We now need to consider how bad the harm might be and also how likely it is to happen. In other words, what is the risk? When we refer to risk in relation to occupational safety and health the most commonly used definition is: ‘risk is the likelihood that a person may be harmed or suffers adverse health effects if exposed to a hazard.’ It’s as simple as that. Remember, a hazard may exist but it does not need to present a risk to people or property.
A very common method of assessing the level of risk is to assign a value to each of two component parts – Likelihood and Severity. As you can see from the matrix below, a combination of Severity x Likelihood = Risk.
Example of a Risk Matrix
As shown in the matrix, the number chosen for each element (Likelihood and Severity) represents a level of significance e.g. high, medium or low. Severity - How bad is the outcome likely to be i.e. the severity of injury or illness?
Likelihood - What are the chances of it happening with the current controls in place? Using a risk matrix allows you to look at each hazard separately and decide how significant the risk might be. The example above is a basic 'Risk Matrix' - it is quite simple, but of course that makes it easy to interpret and it does just fine for most applications. You may find matrices that are much more detailed or complex, but they usually work along the same principles. It's important to note, that the intention of a risk matrix is not to provide a specific, 'quantitative' measurement of risk. We aren't 'measuring' anything physically. It does, however, allow the assessor to prioritise according to the perceived risk level. It's up to us to decide the following for each hazard or work activity:
Firstly, the Likelihood should be determined. We must decide which of the following best reflects the chance of the outcome happening - Very Likely (3), Possible (2) or Unlikely (1) Once we've taken a note of that, we need to look at Severity. How severe would the outcome be if the worst was to happen? - Major Injury (3), Minor Injury (2) or Trivial (1) When we have assigned a number to both Likelihood and Severity, we can then multiply them to produce our risk rating. As you can see, the risk matrix does this for you. It also provides a traffic light colour to make interpretation of the results even easier. Let's look at an HSE risk assessment example to explain a little further... Thinking back to our risk matrix, how would you rate the following scenario (image below) when thinking about the 'Severity' and 'Likelihood' of a collision between the forklift and a pedestrian?
Health and Safety Risk Assessment - Practice Example
Severity - if a pedestrian was hit by the forklift truck, what might the consequences be? Hopefully you will agree that the potential severity of the injuries could be very high (if not fatal). So, we would have to score this as a 3 (Major Injury) in our risk matrix. Likelihood - when considering the chance that a collision would happen in this specific scenario. How would you score it? Considering that there the driver is moving with a raised load (obscured view) and that there is no physical segregation between the person and the forklift. We would have to say that a collision is highly likely. How would that look on our risk matrix?
Risk Matrix Scoring
If we rate the Severity as 3 (Major) and the Likelihood as 3 (Very Likely), that means we end up with a risk rating of 9. As you can see if you look back at the risk matrix, 9 is the highest score. This would normally indicate that there is much room for improvement and also that action should be urgently prioritised. As you can see below, there are lots of factors that will contribute to the likelihood being high or low. As for severity, there usually aren't so many variables that will change the degree of harm that will be caused. Unless there is a significant change made to remove the hazard or substitute the methods used.
Risk Matrix - Influencing Factors
Hierarchy of Controls
We need to decide if the risks are at a reasonable or acceptable level, or if we need to put further control measures in place.
Control measures include actions that can be taken to reduce the potential of exposure to the hazard. Or the control measure could be to remove the hazard or to reduce the likelihood of the risk of the exposure to that hazard being realised. A simple control measure would be the secure guarding of moving parts of machinery - eliminating the potential for contact. When we look at control measures we often refer to the hierarchy of control measures. If you'd like to find out more on the process of choosing control measures for HSE Risk Assessment, listen to our podcast below, keep reading or both! The hazard controls in the hierarchy are, in order of decreasing effectiveness:
1. Elimination: Physical removal of the hazard — this is the most effective hazard control. For example, if employees must work high above the ground, the hazard can be eliminated by moving the piece they are working on to ground level to eliminate the need to work at heights. 
2. Substitution: Substitution, the second most effective hazard control, involves replacing something that produces a hazard (similar to elimination) with something that does not produce a hazard—for example, replacing a stepladder with a mobile scaffold. To be an effective control, the new method must not produce another hazard. Or at least, not present as hazard that has more potential to harm than the previous option. As airborne dust can be hazardous, if a product can be purchased with a larger particle size (likely to be less harmful), the product with a smaller particle size may effectively be substituted. The aim here is to reduce the potential for harm, whilst being careful not to introduce new risks. 3. Engineering Controls: The third most effective means of controlling hazards is engineered controls. These do not eliminate hazards, but rather isolate people from hazards. Capital costs of engineered controls tend to be higher than less effective controls in the hierarchy, however they may reduce future costs. For example, a team might decide to build a work platform rather than use fall arrest equipment. The work platform would usually provide a physical barrier between personnel and falls from height. 
Other examples of engineering controls would be interlocks on electrical devices (electric shock/electrocution). Guards on grinding and cutting tools to prevent physical contact with blades or rotating devices. Or, for respiratory protection, LEV (Local Exhaust Ventilation) systems or fume-hoods can be used to remove harmful airborne materials. 4. Administrative controls: Administrative controls are changes to the way people work. Examples of administrative controls include procedure changes, employee training, and installation of signs and warning labels. Administrative controls do not remove hazards, but limit or prevent people’s exposure to the hazards, such as completing road construction at night when fewer people are driving. 5. Personal Protective Equipment: Personal protective equipment (PPE) includes gloves, Nomex/Uniform, respirators, hard hats, safety glasses, high-visibility clothing, and safety footwear. PPE is the least effective means of controlling hazards because of the high potential for damage to render PPE ineffective. 
Additionally, some PPE, such as respirators, increase the physical effort needed to complete a task. Therefore, you may need to consider if workers can use the PPE without further risk to their health. That wraps up the hierarchy of control - now you can select control measures with confidence. Remember, make sure to only include the significant risks. Keeping it simple and easy to read should be prioritised for communication and training purposes. The more focused and relevant you can make the health and safety risk assessment, the more effective it will be. Also, when deciding which controls measures to put in place, make sure they are reasonable i.e. they should be proportionate according to the level of risk that exists.
We need to look at our options and balance the time, cost and effort against the level of risk reduction that we foresee being achieved. If we can strike the right balance, we can truly add value for both the employee’s and for the business. If we have a low severity, low likelihood task. It wouldn’t be reasonable to have to spend lots of money on plant and equipment to further reduce what is already a low risk. On the other hand, if we have a high likelihood task that presents a significant risk to our employee/s. It starts to make sense to apply greater resources toward mitigating that risk. In the UK, the term 'Reasonably Practicable' is written into health and safety law. It allows those responsible for health and safety to balance risk reduction against the time, money and effort required. Watch our short animation to learn more... https://youtu.be/ZUv1kYATYcY For those hazards that require further controls, we need to determine and outline the specific actions required. Responsibility should then be assigned to those who are required take action and a programme for completion agreed.
Your risk assessment should be recorded and shared with the relevant people. Communicating the outcomes of the risk assessment is arguably the most important part of the process. Take the time to think about how you will go about doing this.
If your team is located locally, it might be possible for you to use the health and safety risk assessment as a discussion topic during a team meeting. In this way, you should be able to get honest feedback on it and find out if there is anything obvious that hasn't been included. Alternatively, it may be easiest to email it to people and get them to sign it off digitally, if they are remote workers. In that case, you may want to have a follow-up conversation to ensure they are happy with the content and outcomes. When do you think it would make sense to review your health and safety risk assessment? There is no specific frequency at which you should review your risk assessment. However, there are times when it makes most sense. For instance, if there has been a change in a process, a new piece of plant of equipment introduced, a new worker employed, or if an accident or incident has occurred. Depending on your business and your internal management system, it may also make sense to have a regular review of your risk assessments. The purpose of this would be to make sure that you have not missed anything new or significant that could present a risk to employees, or others.
We've made a mini-class of how to go through the process of drafting up a health and safety risk assessment, to compliment this guide. We recommend checking this out to help bring the learning together. Download our free, fillable template or create your own online risk assessment. https://youtu.be/T5iZxpkt9w4
In the UK, the law states that a risk assessment must be 'suitable and sufficient', i.e. it should show that:
The level of detail in a risk assessment should be proportionate to the risk and appropriate to the nature of the work. Insignificant risks can usually be ignored, as can risks arising from routine activities associated with life in general, unless the work activity changes or makes the risks worse. Your health and safety risk assessment should only include what you could reasonably be expected to know - you are not expected to anticipate unforeseeable risks. Watch our video for some tips on avoiding some of the other very common mistakes! https://youtu.be/ndfoKBSvMPE
Let's summarise what we've discussed with a short animated video on the 5 steps of HSE risk assessment - if there's any part of the 5 steps you didn't quite grasp, why not revisit that part again? https://youtu.be/b9dtWEN8VTs That's all folks!
The next time someone asks you 'what is a health and safety risk assessment?', you'll not only be able to answer them, but you will be able to explain the steps to carry one out. Or you can send them to here to let them find out for themselves!
Remember, it's not about creating mountains of paperwork but identifying sensible measures to control risk to those affected.
If your business needs any help with health and safety, you can find out more about our flexible Support Services over here.
Make sure to share this resource with your colleagues and peers if you found it helpful, we've made it easy for you with our Social Share buttons! 
In this Episode of Safeti School, we walk through the three step decision-making process for minimising risk when working at at height. AVOID -...
We've got to the fifth and final part of our five step risk assessment process and that is simply to record and review your...
In this Safeti School Episode, we look at one of the themes that’s being talked about across the business world currently, that is psychological...