Life itself is one big risk. At one time or the other, you must have come across this statement before now. This being a verified truth, increasing the chances of success in your businesses and organizational activities, therefore, requires that you pay attention to associated risks – and one of the best ways of doing that is through a risk assessment software.
This involves paying attention to negative potentials related to the health and safety of your staffs and the organization at large. Furthermore, it also involves looking out for ways in which we can strike them out of the equation, or at least, manage their presence.
Risk Assessment System: What It Means
To understand risk assessment system perfectly, let’s see what risk assessment is all about.
According to HSE, risk assessment is a detailed examination of what is capable of causing harm to people in the workspace so as to see if enough precaution has been taken or more preventive measures can be applied.
Having this in mind, the risk assessment system simply means a step by step guide to eliminating and managing risks within the workspace. A person or department from your organization should be responsible for this task. A safe working environment is next to impossible without a risk assessment system.
5 steps Kick-Starting a Risk Assessment System
Risk assessment system requires a well-planned structure. There are steps to getting it right, let’s consider these steps.
Step 1: Recognize Potential Hazards
Identifying possible hazards is the first step in your risk assessment journey. To do this effectively, it is important that you spot the delineation mark between “hazards and risks.” Hazard refers to something capable of causing harm while risk is the degree of possibility of the harm coming to reality.
Potential hazards may be physical, mental, biological, or even chemical in nature.
Here are a couple of tips for identifying potential hazards;
- Take an inspection walk around the workplace.
- Ask employees for possible hazard source(s)
Step 2: Identify Potential Subjects of Recognized Hazards
Who is likely to be harmed? How can they be harmed? After recognizing potential hazards, it is important that you note who is likely to be on the receiving end.
These are likely to be your workers, clients, people in the neighbourhood, or interestingly, even you. Furthermore, get foresight on ways in which these dangers might come to reality.
Step 3: Access The Risks and Apply Control Measures.
Identifying potential hazards won’t be enough. It is even more important to examine to what extent these risks are capable of causing damage.
This will inform important decisions when deciding what control measure you are going to adopt as mentioned earlier, control measures involve managing the risks or completely eliminating them when possible.
Step 4: Document Results of Your Findings.
Doing all the aforementioned shows you want a safe workspace. furthermore, recording your findings is another important step, especially when your workforce consists of 5 or more employees.
Recording your findings shows that you have identified potential hazards, the potential subjects at risk, and most importantly, designed plans to eliminate or manage them as the case may require.
Step 5: Review Your Assessment Occasionally and Make Necessary Adjustments.
The development comes with changes. A workplace with the same configuration over the years is likely not to be developing. As you progress with work, you make vital changes, these are likely to breed a new set of work hazards. Hence, the need for risk assessment to be reviewed and updated occasionally.
Make Your Workspace Safer Today
Ensuring a safe working environment can be tasking, especially if you run a complex organization. Get in touch with Beakon today and you will surely be on track to securing a safe workspace. They take workplace safety to the next level by utilizing topnotch software in getting the job done. sign up today and get started with a free trial.
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