Accidents happen at work. Sometimes they’re preventable, other times they’re not. Depending on how serious the accident is, the consequences can include damaged equipment and injured workers, two things that can disrupt your company’s productivity. Taking steps to ensure accidents don’t happen is a major responsibility of both workers and employers.
One of the best ways to reduce both the number and severity of work accidents is to put procedures in place that help with that. Safety risk assessments are exactly the tool for the job. A risk assessment offers systematic methods for identifying and then minimizing workplace hazards, which then makes the chances of those hazards resulting in accidents much lower. Here’s what you should know about the risk assessment process
What Risk Assessments Do
What risk assessments do is establish policies and procedures for companies to follow that, when implemented, make it less likely that employees will become injured and equipment will suffer damage. A risk assessment involves examining worksites and the types of activities that occur on that worksite, looking for inherent hazards associated with that site and those activities. Safety risk assessments also look for any instances where there may not currently be any work hazards but may develop at a later date if conditions are left unchecked.
A risk assessment does more than just look at workplace hazards that could affect employees. Safety risk assessments are concerned with finding all hazards, including ones that might only affect non-employees like retail customers, third-party delivery personnel, and site visitors. This way, a worksite becomes safer for everyone involved, regardless of whether they’re employed there or not.
How Safety Risk Assessments Provide Greater Overall Safety
Safety risk assessments are more than tools for identifying workplace hazards. In fact, they’re also ideal for strategizing on how to address these hazards appropriately. Of course, this requires employers to know that there are issues that need to be addressed in the first place. Business owners naturally instruct their employees to report safety risks, but these owners need to conduct safety risk assessments themselves regularly as well.
Employers who make it a point to have a risk assessment schedule are much better prepared to understand their worksite’s overall safety levels. This is where safety risk assessments truly shine, as an employer can identify a potential risk with an assessment and then move to address that risk before that hazard can cause an accident.
The Last Word on Safety Risk Assessments
It’s always a good idea to take a cautious approach to safety. This goes double when it comes to protecting your ability to earn a living. It’s in both the best interest of an employer and their workers to take every action possible to keep worksites safe, and safety risk assessments help accomplish that. If you want your business to be successful, then you must conduct regular and consistent risk assessments.
