Risk Assessment procedure in Health and Safety

What is risk assessment?

Risk assessment is a careful examination of anything in your workplace that could cause people to suffer injury or ill-health while they're at work.
It doesn't have to be complicated, whats important is that you concentrate on significant hazards which could result in serious harm or affect a number of people.

How to conduct risk assessments?

According to HSE(Health & Safety Executive), here's how to conduct risk assessment in steps:
Step 1: Identify the hazards
Step 2- Decide on Who might b harmed and how
Step 3- Evaluate the risk and decide on control measures 
Step 4- Record your significant findings.
Step 5- Regularly Review your risk assessment

Step 1: Identify the hazards

In order to identify hazards you need to understand the difference between a ‘hazard’ and ‘risk’. A hazard is ‘something with the potential to cause harm’ and a risk is ‘the likelihood of that potential harm being realised’.
Hazards can be identified by using a number of different techniques such as walking round the workplace, or asking your employees.

Step 2: Decide who might be harmed and how

Once you have identified a number of hazards you need to understand who might be harmed and how, such as ‘people working in the warehouse’, or members of the public.

(A "4x4" Risk Matrix for evaluating risk severity )

Step 3: Evaluate the risks and decide on control measures

After identifying the hazards  and  deciding who might be harmed and how you are then required to protect the people from harm.
Basically For This you''ll need to evaluate how serious each risk is, which can be determined using "Risk Matrix" approach.

Step 4: Record your findings

Your findings should be written down it’s a legal requirement where there are 5 or more employees; and by recording the findings it shows that you have identified the hazards, 
decided who could be harmed and how, and also shows how you plan to eliminate the risks and hazards.

Step 5: Review your assessment and update as and when necessary

You should never forget that few workplaces stay the same and as a result this risk assessment should be reviewed and updated when required.




Hope this post has given you more insight into risk assessments,  please feel free to discuss this information or post more specific information below.