Risk Assessment Compliance for the Workplace
Did you know that you have to complete risk assessments, by law? The management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 states that employers must identify any hazards and levels of risk to the health and safety of their employees while they’re at work.
If you didn’t know that, don’t worry. You’re in the right place.
What is a risk assessment?
A risk assessment is the process of identifying hazards, evaluating risks and controlling or eliminating those hazards during daily tasks and activities.
This also involves applying control measures to make sure your people and any visitors to your site are safe. Ultimately, you have to decide what might cause harm to people and take reasonable steps to prevent that harm.
If you employ over five people, you must keep a written record of all of your assessments. If you don’t? You could face a fine or even prosecution.
How often should I do a risk assessment?
There are a few factors that determine how often you should conduct an assessment.
These include:
- Internal incidents
If there’s an incident in your business, your competent person should look at how it happened and see if there are any gaps that need filling in your risk management program.
- External incidents
If an incident happens outside of your organisation, you can use that as an opportunity to audit your current processes.
- Process change
If you’ve evaluated your processes and decided something needs to change, it’s important to risk assess any new processes you put in their place.
- New equipment
When you have new equipment, make sure you understand the potential hazards and risks of using it.
- New employees
If you’ve got a new employee taking over a process or activity, it's best practice to perform hazard identification before they begin.
- New environment
Office move? An employee working from height? If the environment of an activity changes.
Getting Risk Assessments right
Pete Doyle, our National Health & Safety Manager, shares some valuable insights on why risk assessments are a vital part of running your business. He also shares some tips on exactly how to conduct one.
How can Citation help?
We can’t fill out your risk assessments for you. But we can make the entire process hassle-free. When you partner with Citation, our risk assessment service provides you with complete support from qualified experts.
We can offer guidance with everything from fire risk assessments and fire safety procedures to COSHH assessments and manual handling.
You’ll also receive instant access to Atlas, our online platform. This will give you the ideal introduction, with access to over 1,000 risk assessment templates and digital storage, distribution and email reminders for review.
If you want to discuss how we can help you save time, simplify your day-to-day and have the peace of mind you’re fully compliant, get in touch with our health and safety consultants today.
What you get
We will give you all of the tools and support you require to create risk assessments that your business can rely on.
- Access to a bank of over 1,000 risk assessment templates, created by our experts that can be customised for your business.
- 24/7 access to our advice line – run by a team of health and safety and risk assessment experts who can give you all the help you need.
- Information about your legal responsibilities and the consequences of getting it wrong.
Why choose Citation?
Citation has over 20 years of Health & Safety experience, which means you’re working with experienced and dedicated consultants.
We’ll equip you with all the knowledge you need to be able to produce your own risk assessments and support you with managing the process as your business changes and grows.
If you’d like more information on managing your Health & Safety, running internal audits or support from our risk assessment experts get in touch with the team today.
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