Five steps to risk assessment

Five steps to risk assessment aims to help you assess health and safety risks.

A risk assessment is an important step in protecting your workers and your business, as well as complying with the law. It helps you focus on the risks that really matter in your workplace – the ones with the potential to cause harm. In many instances, straightforward measures can readily control risks, for example, ensuring spillages are cleaned up promptly so people do not slip or cupboard drawers kept closed to ensure people do not trip. For most, that means simple, cheap and effective measures to ensure your most valuable asset – your workforce – is protected.                                           

A risk assessment is simply a careful examination of what, in your work, could cause harm to people, so that you can weigh up whether you have taken enough precautions or should do more to prevent harm. Workers and others have a right to be protected from harm caused by a failure to take reasonable control measures.

The law does not expect you to eliminate all risk, but you are required to protect people as far as is ‘reasonably practicable’. This guide tells you how to achieve that with minimum fuss.

This is not the only way to do a risk assessment, there are other methods that work well, particularly for more complex risks and circumstances. However, we believe this method is the most straightforward for most organisations.

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How to assess the risks in your workplace

Follow the five steps in our leaflet: Five steps to risk assessment.

1. Identify the hazards
2. Decide who might be harmed and how
3. Evaluate the risks and decide on precaution
4. Record your findings and implement them
5. Review your assessment and update if necessary

Don’t overcomplicate the process. In many organisations, the risks are well known and the necessary control measures are easy to apply. You probably already know whether, for example, you have employees who move heavy loads and so could harm their backs, or where people are most likely to slip or trip. If so, check that you have taken reasonable precautions to avoid injury.

If you run a small organisation and you are confident you understand what’s involved, you can do the assessment yourself. You don’t have to be a health and safety expert.

Download the Risk Assessment and Policy Template. This template brings together your risk assessment, health and safety policy, and record of health and safety arrangements into one document to help you get started and save time. If you already have a health and safety policy, you may choose to simply complete the risk assessment part of the template. We also have a number of example risk assessments to show you what a risk assessment might look like. Choose the example closest to your own business and use it as a guide for completing the template, adapting it to meet the needs of your own business.

If you work in a larger organisation, you could ask a health and safety adviser to help you. If you are not confident, get help from someone who is competent. In all cases, you should make sure that you involve your staff or their representatives in the process. They will have useful information about how the work is done that will make your assessment of the risk more thorough and effective. But remember, you are responsible for seeing that the assessment is carried out properly.
When thinking about your risk assessment, remember:

• a hazard is anything that may cause harm, such as chemicals, electricity, working from ladders, an open drawer, etc; and
• the risk is the chance, high or low, that somebody could be harmed by these and other hazards, together with an indication of how serious the harm could be.

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