What factors should you consider when risk assessment?

A critical step to creating a safe and healthy workplace is understanding the nature of risks, the harm that hazards could inflict on your employees and the likelihood of those hazards actually occurring. When managing workplace health and safety (WHS), this is considered the risk assessment phase and takes place after potential hazards have been identified.

Índice Show

When to do a risk assessment
How to do a risk assessment
1. Figure out the severity of potential harm that could occur.
2. Determine what sequence of events has to happen for the hazard to occur.
3. Work out how likely the harm is to occur.
Identify hazards
Assess the risks
Control the risks
Record your findings
Review the controls

Risk assessment is a process for developing your knowledge of hazards and risks in your workplace, so your organisation can make well-informed decisions about how to control them. By understanding the potential hazards and risks in your work environment, you will be able to avoid or minimise their effects or ideally, eliminate them completely. How a risk assessment is done should be tailored to your company and the specific situation, which means it could either be a simple discussion among colleagues or something more formal with specific risk analysis tools driven by safety professionals.

When to do a risk assessment

Before conducting a risk assessment, you should decide whether one needs to be done in the first place. A risk assessment should be done if:

You have limited knowledge of a hazard or risk.
You're not sure of all the things that could go wrong should a hazard occur.
There are hazards in a part of your work environment that could potentially impact other hazards and impose new and greater risks, but you're uncertain how and to what extent.

Essentially if there is a lack of understanding or uncertainty around a hazard or risk, a risk assessment makes sense. Many hazards and risks across multiple industries, however, are well known and have established control measures, so if that is the case, a risk assessment has already been done for you. In this circumstance, you'll refer to WHS laws and compliance regulations or your industry standard so you can properly implement the required controls.

Once you have determined a risk assessment needs to be done, regardless of your industry or the type of hazard, there are three basic tasks you'll want to cover.

How to do a risk assessment

1. Figure out the severity of potential harm that could occur.

As mentioned, prior to doing a risk assessment, you will have already identified all potential hazards in your workplace, so your next first task is to work out the harm that the hazard could cause and the severity of that harm. The severity of the harm will influence how critical it is to control the risk of the hazard occurring. The key in this step is to ask the following:

What harm could occur?
What factors could influence the severity of the harm?
How many people could be affected by the harm?
Are there any factors or situations that could make the harm worse?

For example, say there is a ledge that doesn't have edge protection on the second story of a building on a construction site. If a worker were to fall over that ledge (about six metres to the ground), they could be seriously injured or even die. In this case, the level of harm that could occur from this hazard is high. If the ledge were to be less than one metre high, on the other hand, the consequences could be less severe and therefore the risk of the hazard may not need immediate control measures put in place.

2. Determine what sequence of events has to happen for the hazard to occur.

Certain circumstances or events have to occur for a hazard to cause harm. Understanding this sequence of events can help you sort out how to lower or even eliminate the risk of the hazard escalating to the point of creating harm. A way SafeWork Victoria suggests working out this sequence is by identifying where things would begin to go wrong and then asking, "If this happens, what may happen next?" In doing this, you could determine what a potential control measure could be and when it should be put in place.

A simple example of this is unpacking shipping containers. When unpacking shipping containers, a potential hazard is slipping or tripping. In this case, the starting point is beginning to unpack a container, then if there is an uneven surface, a worker could trip, or if the worker is not wearing the appropriate footwear, he or she could slip. Through this exercise, it becomes evident that when unpacking containers, to prevent the risk of tripping or slipping, workers should ensure floor surfaces are even and undamaged and workers are wearing sturdy shoes with good traction.

3. Work out how likely the harm is to occur.

The likelihood that a hazard will cause harm will affect how much effort you need to place on controlling the risks. You will want to rate the likelihood on a simple five-point scale from "rare" to "certain to occur."

To estimate the likelihood, you will consider the following:

What is known about the risk: For instance, does it always exist or does it exist only at certain times? Are there particular controls in place already and how effective are they?
The circumstances at your work: For example, do certain operating or environmental conditions make the risk greater?
How the work related to the risk is being done: Is the risk greater depending on who is doing the work or how it is done? For instance, if someone is less experienced, is the likelihood for potential harm increased?

Referencing the above scenario of unpacking shipping containers scenario, cold and rainy weather would make injuries more likely, so if workers are operating in those conditions, harm is more likely to occur and therefore, control measures like heaters and wet weather protection need to be provided.

By carrying out a risk assessment according to the above three steps, you and your organisation will have an understanding of what harm hazards can lead to, how those hazards bring about harm and the probability the harm will occur, allowing you to put the proper control measures in place to manage the hazards and risks.

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Risk management is a step-by-step process for controlling health and safety risks caused by hazards in the workplace.

You can do it yourself or appoint a competent person to help you.

Identify hazards

Look around your workplace and think about what may cause harm (these are called hazards). Think about:

how people work and how plant and equipment are used
what chemicals and substances are used
what safe or unsafe work practices exist
the general state of your premises

Look back at your accident and ill health records as these can help you identify less obvious hazards. Take account of non-routine operations, such as maintenance, cleaning or changes in production cycles.

Think about hazards to health, such as manual handling, use of chemicals and causes of work-related stress.

For each hazard, think about how employees, contractors, visitors or members of the public might be harmed.

Vulnerable workers

Some workers have particular requirements, for example young workers, migrant workers, new or expectant mothers and people with disabilities.

Talk to workers

Involve your employees as they will usually have good ideas.

Assess the risks

Once you have identified the hazards, decide how likely it is that someone could be harmed and how serious it could be. This is assessing the level of risk.

Decide:

who might be harmed and how
what you're already doing to control the risks
what further action you need to take to control the risks
who needs to carry out the action
when the action is needed by

Control the risks

Look at what you're already doing, and the controls you already have in place. Ask yourself:

can I get rid of the hazard altogether?
if not, how can I control the risks so that harm is unlikely?

If you need further controls, consider:

redesigning the job
replacing the materials, machinery or process
organising your work to reduce exposure to the materials, machinery or process
identifying and implementing practical measures needed to work safely
providing personal protective equipment and making sure workers wear it

Put the controls you have identified in place. You're not expected to eliminate all risks but you need to do everything 'reasonably practicable' to protect people from harm. This means balancing the level of risk against the measures needed to control the real risk in terms of money, time or trouble.

You can find more detailed guidance on controls relevant to your business.

Record your findings

If you employ 5 or more people, you must record your significant findings, including.

the hazards (things that may cause harm)
who might be harmed and how
what you are doing to control the risks

To help you, we have a risk assessment template and examples. Do not rely purely on paperwork as your main priority should be to control the risks in practice.

Review the controls

You must review the controls you have put in place to make sure they are working. You should also review them if:

they may no longer be effective
there are changes in the workplace that could lead to new risks such as changes to:
- staff
- a process
- the substances or equipment used

Also consider a review if your workers have spotted any problems or there have been any accidents or near misses.

Update your risk assessment record with any changes you make.