What Happens During a Health and Safety Risk Assessment, and Why It’s Necessary
Is it really necessary to spend time and money on a professional health and safety assessment or will common sense and vigilance be enough to create an acceptable working environment for your team? The latter is definitely not the answer. In fact, it is a legal requirement in South Africa to look after the wellbeing of people in your employ to a reasonable extent. As Section 8 (1) of the South African Occupational Health and Safety Act (85 of 1993) stipulates:
“Every employer shall provide and maintain, as far as reasonably practicable, a working environment that is safe and without risk to the Health and Safety of his/her employees.”
Conducting such an assessment is a way of ensuring that your organisation is compliant, and will protect you against potential lawsuits based on the premise of negligence and non-compliance. This, however, is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the benefits provided by such an assessment.
Organisations that invest in conducting a health and safety risk assessment also experience the following benefits:
- increased levels of productivity,
- a reduction in insurance premiums,
- reduced employee absenteeism,
- improved staff retention and employee morale; and
- lower staff turnover rates and related expenses.
These benefits can all be attributed to the fact that such an assessment allows an employer to create a safer, more efficient and less frustrating work environment.
So, What Does a Health and Safety Risk Assessment Involve?
The process can be broken down into the following five simplified steps:
Step 1: Focus on the identification of potential hazards – The first step is to recognise any element that can pose harm to employees, equipment and/or processes in the workplace. This does not yet address solutions or define required behaviour.
Step 2: Identify who could face harm, as well as how they could be harmed – Not every person in your team is exposed to the same dangers or exposed to potential risks at all times. Identify the individuals who are exposed, when they are exposed and how this harm would be inflicted.
Step 3: Evaluate these dangers and formulate processes and precautions to minimise them – Now that you know what risks exist, who could face danger, and how they could be harmed, you can evaluate the severity of the potential risks and the chance of these actually happening.
Step 4: Implement a solution – Now that you have captured this information, you can eliminate possible harm or implement necessary changes. It also enables you to create policies and processes that allow you to avoid, minimise, or contain these risks in a way that is both effective and economically viable.
Step 5: Review and adjust as necessary – Conditions change – and so do the habits of people. It is, therefore, necessary to conduct a health and safety assessment on an annual basis to ensure that no new dangers have emerged and that current policies are still adequate to mitigate any existing risks.
If your organisation is due for a health and safety risk assessment, contact IOH Solutions for a quote. We are an accredited service provider that works with a number of the largest companies in Africa.