Risk Assessments

Each activity in a workplace needs to be risk-assessed, to identify potential hazards (eg, working with live electricity, hazardous chemicals or at height, manual handling, Noise, etc). If there is risk of injury, appropriate controls must be put in place. If the hazard cannot be eliminated, the risk must be reduced as far as possible.

In order to fully understand how you, as a small business owner/manager, should manage workplace safety, health and welfare, it is necessary to have an understanding of risk assessment. Risk assessment is fundamental to good health and safety practice and, in a typical small business, it can be undertaken quickly and easily and without any specialist training or expertise.

All employers regardless of the size of business are required by law to carry out a risk assessment at their place of work and to keep a written record of that risk assessment.  In essence, a risk assessment is simply a careful examination of work activities carried out at a workplace in order to:

Identify hazards (i.e. potential for harm).

Identify the level of risk for each hazard (i.e. the likelihood of harm occurring coupled with the potential severity of injury or ill health as a result).

Identify the controls or improvements that need to be put in place to avoid or reduce the risk.

Carrying out a risk assessment means you must carefully assess what in your workplace could cause harm to your employees and other people who may have a reason to be at your workplace including customers, suppliers, sales representatives, etc. 

It is important to remember that, in identifying hazards and assessing risks, employers should only consider those which are generated by work activities. There is no need to consider every minor hazard or risk which we accept as part of our everyday lives. For example, you do not need to identify the lifting of a 1kg package as a workplace hazard; but lifting a 25kg box of 1kg packages would be a hazard.