The Preventive Work of Risk Assessments: Why Are They Life Savers
Undertaking effective risk assessments in the workplace is a key part of an employer’s duty of care towards employees and workers. The importance of a risk assessment can, however, extend into all areas of the business. Here are the five main reasons for undertaking a robust health and safety risk assessment in the workplace.
Promote Safety
The main reason for undertaking risk assessments in the workplace is to promote safety (which also promotes health and wellbeing). Undertaking a health and safety risk assessment in the workplace requires employers to identify all hazards (actual and potential). Once the hazards have been identified, they can either be removed or controlled.
Ensure Legal Compliance
Legal compliance is the process of demonstrating conclusively that you have taken all reasonable steps to deal with an issue (actual or potential). Businesses can only deal with issues when they know they either do or could exist.
Part of the importance of a risk assessment is, therefore, to show that you have done your best to identify hazards.
To ensure legal compliance, it’s vital that all risk assessments in the workplace are fully documented. In the modern world, this means not only recording what you did but also why you did it. Likewise, if you chose not to do something, then it needs to be recorded that this inaction was an active decision, not an oversight.
The reason this matters is that regulatory bodies are likely to take your thought process into consideration when evaluating your business during an audit or inspection. Essentially, they now want to see that your safety decisions are taken on the basis of solid reasoning rather than any other factor.
Improve Operational Efficiency
There are three main ways a health and safety risk assessment in the workplace improves operational efficiency.
Prevents Accidents
Accidents inevitably result in some form of unplanned downtime. Even when this downtime is brief (such as treating a basic cut), it still impacts operations. Accidents also require some form of follow-up administration (such as making an entry in an accident book). This creates additional and unnecessary work. It therefore impacts on core tasks.
Avoids Unplanned Worker Absences
Accidents do not have to be particularly serious to lead to unplanned worker absences. A continual stream of minor accidents can lower staff morale to the point that it impacts attendance.
Some workers may begin to suffer from mental health issues (such as anxiety and stress). Others may just become unenthusiastic about the project to the point where they start taking ad-hoc (unauthorised) days off. Workers may also decide to look for other jobs (in safer environments). This creates the challenge of replacing them.
Streamlines Operations
The information gathered through risk assessments can be used for other purposes such as streamlining business operations. In fact, there is often a lot of cross-over between health and safety measures and operational efficiency measures. This is because safe operations are streamlined operations and streamlined operations are efficient operations.
Support Cost Management
A large part of the business importance of a risk assessment is that it plays a key role in effective cost management.
Firstly, it minimises the risk of the business being faced with unexpected expenses due to accidents and workplace injury claims. Even minor injuries can prove expensive.
Secondly, it facilitates operational improvements that often result in higher productivity and, hence, lower costs. They can also result in improved project outcomes and, therefore, higher profits.
Maintain the Company’s Reputation
There are two main ways that risk assessments help to maintain a company’s reputation. Firstly, they prevent accidents and the immediate negative attention they draw.
Secondly, they help to improve operational efficiency. This improves project outcomes. (In other words, it helps to maximise the chances of a project being completed on time and within budget). This makes clients happy and therefore enhances the company’s reputation in the industry.
To find out more about steel gantries and how they can help your lifting processes, please get in touch with SHEARFORCE today!
