Conducting a Risk assessment of Your Workplace

Besides the legal requirements of conducting risk assessments and ensuring the safety of your workplace, a risk assessment ensures that you preserve your most invaluable asset – human capital.

The purpose of risk assessment, like workplace desk assessments, is to ensure that the appropriate combative measures are put in place to address any potential hazards. The potential of an accident could be electrical, poor posture while working, and many more.

This is why every business needs a risk assessment of the work area at least once annually. An annual assessment of the workplace is what we recommend, but this rule isn`t one-size-fits-all, so you will need to consider the type of business before determining the frequency of an assessment.

Anyways, we have listed several steps to guide you when assessing the workplace and help prevent any accidents from occurring.

Have a record:

Before you can conduct a risk assessment you need details on what you will assess. Having a record of all office details, like appliances, floors, shelves, machinery, etc will give you clarity on places to look at.

Identify the hazards:

As soon as you have all the required details, go on to identify the type of hazard that may occur. Some common categories of hazards are physical, mental, biological, chemical, electrical, etc.

Profile your employees into each of the likely categories to enable you to weigh the threats better. Computer-bases employees are more prone to electrical, mental, and physical hazards, so organizing DSE training, for instance, can help minimize risks.

Take action:

After you must have identified the threats, you need to start addressing them. You can brainstorm with your team on the best ways to address the potential risk or hire consultants.

Put in place the basics like; fire alarms and extinguishers, well-lit exist and signs, repair damaged appliances, and so on.

Final thoughts:

Ensure that you conduct a risk assessment regularly: limiting it to an annual ritual may be costly. Put up measures to address any hazard on time and ensure that your employees can communicate any potential hazard.