How to control health and safety risks?

Controlling the risks in the workplace is an important part of managing health and safety in your business.

The best way to do this is to undertake risk assessments, where you think about what might cause harm to people and decide what reasonable steps you can take to prevent that harm.

You probably already take reasonable steps to protect your team, customers and the public, but undertaking a risk assessment will help you decide if you have covered everything that you need to and will also provide a record.

Risk assessments are about identifying sensible steps that you and your team can take to control the risks in your workplace. They are not about creating piles and piles of unnecessary paperwork.

It’s important that you keep a record of any significant findings, but it isn’t necessary to record everyday risks. Try to keep things simple and focussed on controls.

Some industries and work tasks have an inherent amount of risk associated with them and the law doesn’t expect you to remove all risks. Instead it expects that you will protect your team, customers and the public by putting in place reasonably practicable steps or measures to control those risks. Your risk assessments also only need to include what you could reasonably be expected to know, so you are not expected to assess unforeseeable risks that you may anticipate.

Most businesses that are low risk will find controlling risk a straightforward process. As a starting point Immerse Medical have provided you with a Risk Assessment template that you can use to record your findings easily. This template is part of the health and safety policy template so that you can keep all of your records in the same place.The Health and Safety Executive have a wide range of example risk assessments that may be helpful to look over before you start yours.