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Properly managing risk assessment is crucial for a business’s productivity because employers can perform tasks better in a safe environment. Contrarily, working in an office or site with hazards everywhere can be overwhelming and dangerous for an employee’s health. So, if you own a business and are not sure you’re 100% in accordance with health and safety regulations, this article briefly touches on the ways to provide proper risk assessment guidance.
Tips To Prepare Your Business for A Risk Assessment
Pinpoint potential hazards
The first step you need to take is to take a look around your office and assess the potential hazards. In this case, you need to think about vulnerable employees, too, such as younger ones or those with disabilities and identify the challenges they might face when going to work. It would be best to have ppe inspection checklist template where you take notes on:
- The way people work and what equipment they use;
- What chemicals or substances are used in the working process;
- If any unsafe work practices are going on;
- Past accidents or ill health records;
Gauge the risks
After getting an in-depth analysis of what needs to be changed in the workspace, you need to determine the level at which people might get injured by:
- Figuring who might be harmed and how;
- What you need to do to take control of the risk;
- Who needs to be in charge of the risk assessment;
- If the action you need to bring is urgent or can wait;
This step might take some time to complete in order for you to take a specific action. You can use an iso 27001 compliance checklist to easily assign roles and allocate tasks to make this process more time-efficient.
Control the risks
Depending on the registered risk levels, you may or may not be able to eliminate it. In this case, you must find a way to control it so that no one gets injured as a temporary solution. So, you need to ensure that harm is unlikely under any circumstance, regardless of the work performed.
For more profound control, you can:
- Change the job’s structural tasks to fit health and safety compliances;
- Replace the materials, machinery or processes with newer and more fitting ones;
- Find ways to organise workload to reduce high exposure to toxic assets or dangerous machinery;
- Provide protective equipment that workers must wear at all times;
Make sure you record the findings
A business with five or more people needs to record significant findings, such as the following:
- All the hazards that come along the way present the potential to harm employees;
- What actions are you taking to control the risks;
Besides all this paperwork, it’s necessary to understand why you are doing this and what are the consequences of ignoring such accidents at the workplace. Not only may you lose employees along the way, but you can also face lawsuits that will damage the company’s reputation and brand. When it comes to health and safety, no shortcuts are to be made.
Finally, make sure you constantly review your actions to ensure they align with the reality on the site or office. That’s because old ones might not be effective anymore due to changes that naturally occur within a company.
Bottom line
Preparing your business for risk assessment means being aware of what’s truly happening at the workplace and taking action when necessary. So, you must constantly record your findings on hazards at the workplace and use them to your company’s advantage.
