I have used this portion of definition for my title because it brings us to the heart of the matter of risk assessment. What is a risk assessment? Risk assessments are processes used by employers because they are duty bound to consider and identify any and all risks in their business that are potentially harmful.
At Home and Abroad
Employers are obligated to address these things at home or in the field and make changes that are reasonably practicable to manage them. These could be risks to employees, suppliers, sub-contractors and to the public as well. There are five major components to every risk assessment:
- Identifying all hazards
- Conclude what is potentially dangerous and who is affected by it
- Evaluate said risks and create a contingency (precautions) to manage it
- Make a record of all findings and employ the action plan to meet the needs of safety
- Make regularly scheduled reviews of all risk assessment policies and update them accordingly
- Making a Plan
After the risk assessment plan is complete, it will be necessary to create an action plan that adequately addresses the issues. The emphasis of any plan needs to be on making the improvements necessary to ensure safety. The need following that would then be to perform regular reviews to assess effectiveness and to address any changes that may develop from day to day.
Many employers can do these things in house. There are trained professionals however, who are established at doing risk assessment planning to incorporate all issues at any scale. Often the situation warrants such involvement. This is especially true for issues that deal with things such as water hygiene, disability access, fire prevention and asbestos. This is just to mention a few. The old adage comes to mind- "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".
At Home and Abroad
Employers are obligated to address these things at home or in the field and make changes that are reasonably practicable to manage them. These could be risks to employees, suppliers, sub-contractors and to the public as well. There are five major components to every risk assessment:
- Identifying all hazards
- Conclude what is potentially dangerous and who is affected by it
- Evaluate said risks and create a contingency (precautions) to manage it
- Make a record of all findings and employ the action plan to meet the needs of safety
- Make regularly scheduled reviews of all risk assessment policies and update them accordingly
- Making a Plan
After the risk assessment plan is complete, it will be necessary to create an action plan that adequately addresses the issues. The emphasis of any plan needs to be on making the improvements necessary to ensure safety. The need following that would then be to perform regular reviews to assess effectiveness and to address any changes that may develop from day to day.
Many employers can do these things in house. There are trained professionals however, who are established at doing risk assessment planning to incorporate all issues at any scale. Often the situation warrants such involvement. This is especially true for issues that deal with things such as water hygiene, disability access, fire prevention and asbestos. This is just to mention a few. The old adage comes to mind- "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".
Herb
