It should be a given for companies to understand the health and safety risks present in the workplace. Knowing about these risks is always the first step in helping to keep employees protected from potential accidents and injuries. Therefore, conducting risk assessments regularly is a critical component of a safe work environment. But how can a company know that it’s conducting risk assessments in an effective way? If those assessments aren’t being handled properly, it’s harder to reduce safety risks and protect employees. With that in mind, we wanted to share some of the best practices for performing workplace safety risk assessments as effectively as possible.
One of the best ways to be efficient with risk assessments is to perform them frequently and schedule them in advance. There is less of a chance that something slips through the cracks or gets overlooked if risk assessments are a regular part of your company’s safety plan. By scheduling them ahead of time, your business can be prepared to conduct risk assessments and never miss an appointment.
Of course, performing risk assessments is pointless if the right people aren’t conducting them. Whether you use in-house employees or get outside help, there needs to be a competent team performing risk assessments. Ideally, this team will have a diverse background with each member bringing a different area of expertise to the table. This helps ensure that safety risks are noticed and assessed from a variety of perspectives.
While it’s important to focus on your specific workplace, it doesn’t hurt to look at similar businesses in your industry. What can you learn about any safety hazards that exist at other companies or accidents they’ve experienced? Not everything is going to be exactly the same, but there could be lessons to be learned from others.
During a risk assessment, it’s not enough to identify all safety hazards. It’s also important to recognize who is at risk for each hazard. Not every safety hazard is a concern for everyone in the company. Some hazards are only a threat to employees in a particular area or department. The more specific you can be with who is at risk of each hazard, the more accurately you can assess the risk created by each safety hazard.
One of the best practices for conducting risk assessments is documenting everything. All of the findings during a risk assessment should be recorded and filed away. This allows the team to review past assessments and compare them with the current assessment. Therefore, the team will be able to see changes over time and identify trends. At the end of the day, the more information you have, the easier it is to make good choices, and documenting all assessments is one of the best ways to gather information.
In addition to documenting risk assessments for future use, those findings should always be shared with employees. They have every right to know about the hazards that exist in the workplace and the types of risks they are facing every day. Even if the process isn’t flawless and the workplace is far from hazard-free, it’s important to be transparent with everything learned from a risk assessment.
In addition to conducting regular risk assessments, the best thing your business can do to make safety a top priority is to use safety management software. For example, the system created by EHS Insight takes every aspect of workplace health and safety and puts it on a single platform. This helps to streamline all safety tasks and needs in an organized and efficient manner. Therefore, your business will be able to address all safety concerns before they lead to an accident. If you want to keep your workplace safe and accident-free, contact us because we want to help you make that a reality.