Risk Assessment Process
An integral part in any health and safety program is the risk assessment process. Risk assessment allows organizations and companies to: identify hazards and risk factors, analyze and evaluate the risk, and ultimately determine ways to eliminate or control the hazard.
By taking this proactive and thorough approach in the workplace, companies gain the ability to plan, control, and prevent hazards in the workplace, making it safer for the workers and helping reduce costs associated with incidents.
The ideal times to conduct a risk assessment are: before implementing a new process or task, before modifying an existing process or equipment, and when new hazards are identified. This ensures the most effective controls can be put into place before workers are exposed.
Planning for a risk assessment can be difficult at first, especially for those new to the process. The easiest way is to develop a plan with a few key areas in mind.
Start by determining the scope of your assessment. Will you be focusing on a type of hazard, like slip and trips, or will you assess a specific process or piece of equipment? This will help reduce overreaching and improve focus for those involved.
Next, identify the resources needed. Where is the information located? Who will be involved (try to get team members all levels of your organization, from management to the frontline worker)? Will there be training required? This will also help you to determine the stakeholders involved (e.g. managers, supervisors, suppliers, etc.).
Finally, you want to ensure you identify the parameters, measures, and relevant laws, regulations, codes or standards that you will follow for the assessment. This gives the participants a clear understanding of the expectations and outcomes of the assessment.
To ensure you are capturing all of the possible hazards that may be present you should look at all aspects of the work, including maintenance and cleaning, accident/incident/near-miss history, look at how the work is done, conditions that may be unusual or uncommon (eg. Power outage), and review all stages of the task.
When looking at the level of risk that the hazards create, you should consider: past experience, legislated requirements, industry best practices, testing, incident data, and observations. This gives the assessor a more complete picture of the task and allow factors such as work environment, frequency of exposure, and skill requirements to be factored into the level of risk.
Once you have identified the risks, you want to prioritize them based on two factors, probability and severity, most commonly used in the form of a simple risk matrix (see below).
By using a simple risk matrix, we are able to categorize the level of risk each hazard has and determine the priority or sequence in which controls are implemented to mitigate and manage the identified hazards.
With hazards identified and categorized using the risk matrix, we need to begin implementing controls using the hierarchy of control, which comprises of 4 main ways. The first and most effective way to control a hazard, as noted in my previous hand safety post, is elimination. By removing the hazard, or replacing it with a less hazardous situation, we are able to reduce the risk probability and severity.
If you are unable to eliminate the hazard, the next step is to look into engineering controls or modifications into the system to reduce the exposure. This can include installing machine guarding, relocating controls away from the danger area, or installing new ventilation to reduce airborne hazards.
Administrative controls can be used to change how the work is done, such as training, frequency, housekeeping, and policies or other rules. While this is not as effective as elimination or engineering controls, ensuring that staff are properly educated in the task/equipment is an important factor, and legal requirement for any employer.
The final, and least effective, method to controlling hazards in the workplace is through the use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Equipment such as protective gloves, hard hats, and safety glasses are used to minimize the severity of workplace incidents, but do not change the risk exposure of the employee.
When completing a risk assessment, it is essential to review the assessment on a regular basis. This ensure that changes made to the workplace have been completed, were accurate, and have not created any new hazards or increased the priority of a previously identified hazard. Keeping records of the original assessment, actions taken, and subsequent reviews is key to the continued improvement. Make sure to document and store records on risk levels, legislated requirements, and management system requirements implemented. This also shows the workers that, as an employer, you are continuously looking for improvements in workplace for health and safety.
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