Manage health and safety risks at your workplace

By Danny Duric posted 08-01-2013 01:45 AM

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As per the OHS (Occupational Health and Safety) legislation, all foreseeable hazards needs to be identified and any risks associated with the same needs to be controlled or eliminated.

Risk management is absolutely essential for every business and it involves asking few questions:

What are the possible hazards existing in the workplace?
What is the seriousness of these hazards?
How to control these hazards?

Risk management is a four step process in which the hazards in the workplace are identified, the risk of these hazards are assessed, and then control measures are implemented that will eliminate or at least minimize the risk of injuries. The implemented control measures need to be reviewed time to time to ensure they actually help fix the problem. The workers have their compensation lawyers, and if you do not take care of their health and safety you will have to face legal issues, so, risk management is crucial.

Hazard identification

To identify hazards it is important to:

Inspect the workplace
Report incidents
Check the list of injuries
Consult with employees
Take feedback from the employees

There are few business activities which may involve risks at work including:

Purchasing: the chemicals or equipments purchased to run business may invite safety issues

Work activities: while performing the work tasks, the psychological and physical stress involved, the working environment and the equipments used can pose a risk to the employees.

Customers/casual employees/contractors: your employees can be at risk due to the work activities they perform and other workers visiting your workplace can also be at risk.

Risk assessment

Risk assessment helps identify if and how serious an effect a hazard can have on your employees and workers. You need to find out which hazards are more risky, and then find a solution for them first. For risk assessment you need to consider:

The hazard type

The severity with which the hazard can injure or cause illness
What are the chances of this consequence taking place
Duration and frequency of the exposure
Who it might effect
Capabilities
Age, experience and skill of the people involved
Your working environment's layout and design

Risk control

Risk control requires deciding how to control or eliminate the risks to safety and health. You should attempt at removing the problem from the workplace completely, and if a complete elimination is not possible you need to use the Hierarchy of Risk Control to decide the best measures to minimize risks.

Hierarchy of risk control

1. To eradicate hazards from workplace reorganize or design - try and ensure that chances of risks are eliminated when new work systems, equipments and materials are being planned for your workplace.

2. Replace or remove the hazards - if possible, eliminate the hazards completely else at least replace it with less hazardous equipments, materials or substances.

3. Isolate or enclose hazards - you can do this by introducing barriers and thus creating a strict work area, enclosing a person from a noisy process.

4. Introduce engineering controls to minimize hazards - you can achieve this by using proper ventilation systems, machine guards and so on.

5. Use proper administrative controls to minimize risks - introduce apt procedures and proper work practices like rotation of job to minimize boredom or exposure time, setting a time for work, housekeeping system and routine maintenance, right working methods and training on hazards.

6. Personal protective equipments - provide each of your employees with proper personal protective equipment and make sure they are trained in using it in the right way.

Review

Risk assessments and control measures need to be reviewed periodically to make sure the implemented control measures are suitable and effective and you also need to make sure the risk assessments are still valid. You can achieve this by opting for periodical workplace inspection, safety audits, discussion with employees and reviewing incident investigations. It is important to build risk management in every sphere of your workplace activities that can cause health and safety concerns.

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