Within the workplace, owners of a business are legally required to assess the risks of injury and ill health affecting employees. Risk assessment is the careful examination of the diverse factors that can bring about these risks. Risk assessment should also make sure that enough precautions are implemented in order to prevent harm coming to an employee.

Ill health and accidents can have a very serious affect on business. They can ruin lives and damage business output. They can also lead to costly court cases and increased insurance costs. Risk assessment procedures should help to dispense with the above and make the workplace a safer environment for employees.

In risk assessment, the most important factor is to decide what is a hazard in the workplace. If the risk is determined to be significant enough, precautions should be put into place so that the risk is minimized or dispensed with altogether. For example, electricity in the workplace is hazardous, but provided that all proper protection is in place, the risk to employees becomes insignificant.

There are five steps that should be undertaken when conducting a thorough risk assessment. The first step is to look for hazards. Take a tour of the workplace and check for potential dangers. Concentrate on anything with the potential to cause serious harm to employees. Also ask for employee opinions on the subject. Accident and ill-health records are a good way of revealing why and how accidents have occurred in the past.

The second step is to decide who might be harmed and how. Decide who might be particularly at risk. Trainees, young workers or expectant mothers may be high on this list. Members of the public who are not familiar with the workplace or anyone who is not in the workplace full time and may not be familiar with the layout may also be at risk.

With the third step, you must calculate whether there have been enough precautions put into place to counter the hazard. For each risk you find, a decision should be made whether you have established enough precautions to reduce the risk. Has your risk assessment procedure taken into account all the health and safety aspects required by law? Is there anything further you can do to reduce the risk, such as issuing protective clothing or preventing access with guardrails?

The next step is to record your findings. Your risk assessment check must show that you have dealt with all the obvious hazard areas. It should also show that you have checked with employees who might be affected and that any hazards that remain have been dealt with and are now reasonably low.

The final step is to review your risk assessment procedures and make revisions if necessary. In the future, new machinery, substances and work procedures could be implemented in the workplace. This is when your revision should take place to ensure that the work environment is risk fee and will continue to be so in the future.