3 Step process of risk management

Before you start:  Consult on how you will implement this risk management process in the workplace.  Use your committee, or safety representative or other consultation arrangement for this.

Most Leglislative Acts  require an employer to consult with employees to enable them to contribute to the making of decisions affecting their health, safety and welfare at work.

This includes consultation when risks to health and safety arising from work are assessed and when decisions are to be made about the measures to be taken to eliminate or control risks. 

Risk Assessment Matrix

Using this table, we can give hazards a priority rating, which helps us to determine which ones to fix first. The Hazard with the ‘1’ rating will be the highest priority, and so we should fix these first.

For example, assume you have a person working with an unguarded machine.  They work on it all day, every day. If they were caught in the machine, they could receive an injury causing a disability. As they are working with it every day, all day, there could be a high probability that an injury could result.

Looking at the Column “Death or Disability”, and Row 2 of High Probability, we join these two and where they meet gives a rating of “2“. The risk level we would set is therefore “2”.

If we assess several hazards in this way, we will have higher priorities than others, and can fix them in this order.

STEP ONE: Identify Hazards in the workplace.

A hazard is usually defines as “anything (including work practices or procedures) that has the potential to harm the health and safety of a person”.

Methods of Identifying Hazards:

Systematic Identification:-

à        Safety Audits

à        Workplace Inspections

à        Incident / Accident Investigations

à        Consultation

à        Injury and Illness Records

à        Health and Environment Monitoring

Incidental Identification:-

à        Complaints

à        Observation

What hazards does the legislation say I need to Identify?

Legislation 'usually' state that the employer is responsible for identifying all foreseeable hazards, in particular, those arising from:

à        Work premises

à        Work practices, work systems and shiftwork (including hazardous processes, psychological and fatigue related hazards)

à        Plant (including transport, installation, erection, commissioning, use, repair, maintenance, dismantling, storage or disposal).

à        Hazardous substances (including the production, handling, use, storage, transport, or disposal)

à        Presence of asbestos

à        Manual handling and occupational overuse syndrome (OOS)

à        Layout and condition of the workplace (including lighting and workstation design)

à        Biological organisms, products or substances

à        Physical working environment (electrocution, drowning, fire, explosion, slips, trips and falls, contact with moving or stationary objects, noise, heat, cold, vibration, static electricity, and contaminated atmospheres)

à        Confined Spaces

à        Workplace Violence.

Classification of Hazards – to help with Hazard Identification

Hazards can be classified into five broad areas:

Physical: eg, noise, light, UV radiation, poor ventilation/air quality, room temperature to hot or cold

Chemical: eg, poisons, dusts, hazardous substances

Biological: eg, parasites, plants, harmful bacteria, viruses

Mechanical / Electrical: eg, slips, trips and falls, plant and equipment, nip points, manual handling

Psychological: stress, boring/repetitive work, shift work, violence / aggression.

STEP TWO: Assess the risk associated with the hazard and assign a probability or priority to each risk.

Assessing the Risk to Health, Safety and Welfare

Once the hazards have been identified, for example by using a checklist, inspection, consultation, reports or observations, they must be assessed. Risks are assessed for a number of reasons, which include determining how serious they are and how great a risk they pose to health and safety of people at work.

The key considerations during risk assessment are the likelihood and severity of any outcomes:

à        The outcome for anyone working with this hazard, which could result in an injury, or fatality.

à        The number of people affected by this hazard

à        How often a person is exposed to the hazard

à        How long a person is exposed to the hazard.

By assessing the risk associated with a hazard, we can then determine which one/s to address first, and this process is also useful in revealing options which can be used to eliminate or control risks.

Once you have identified the hazards in your workplace, you need to assess the level of risk of each of these, and determine why they are hazards.  For example, excessive noise in the workplace is a hazard because it can cause damage to hearing, and hearing loss. It may be a high risk because it is present continuously in a workplace, or it may be a lower risk because it is a rare event.

Some hazards may not have a high level of risk, whereas others may be very risky, and have serious consequences, or multiple consequences.  You can use a Risk Assessment Matrix to determine the level of Risk which is associated with a particular hazard.

STEP THREE: Identify control options and then put control measures in place to eliminate the risk, or to control the risk.

Requirement to Eliminate or Control risks:

Legislation 'usually' states that an employer is to eliminate any reasonably foreseeable risk to the health and safety of their employee or any other person legally at the employer’s place of work.

If it is not reasonably practicable to eliminate the risk, the employer must control the risk. The employer is also responsible to ensure that all measures (including procedures and equipment) that are adopted to eliminate or control the risks to health and safety are properly used and maintained.

Meaning of Control:

It is an obligation to take the following measures or control (in the order specified) to minimise the risk to health and safety to the lowest level reasonably practicable:

(a) Firstly, substituting the hazard that gives rise to the risk with a hazard that gives rise to a lesser risk.

(b) Secondly, isolating the hazard from the person put at risk,

(c) Thirdly, minimising the risk by engineering means

(d) Fourthly, minimising the risk by administrative means (for example, by adopting safe work practices or providing appropriate training, instruction or information),

(e) Fifthly, using personal protective equipment.

When does the legislation require me to identify Hazards?

Most Legislation 'usually'  states that an employer must ensure that effective procedures are in place, and are implemented, to identify hazards:

à        Immediately prior to using premises for the first time as a place of work,

à        Before and during the installation, erection, commissioning or alteration of plant in a place of work,

à        Before changes to work practices and systems of work are introduced,

à        Before hazardous substances are introduced into a place of work,

à        While work is being carried out,

à        When new or additional information from an authoritative source relevant to the health or safety of the employees of the employer becomes available.

Examples of hazards which can be found in workplace include:

à        Machinery which is inadequately guarded or fenced

à        Materials handling/manual handling or objects, persons or animals

à        Chemicals which may harm a person in some way, such as burn the skin, or poison, or be flammable

à        Working at heights, so that a person could fall

à        Working beneath a process where something could fall on the person below

à        Working in excessively hot or cold conditions, or in the UV of the sun

à        Working around moving vehicles and moving plant and equipment

à        Working with animals