We recently had a meeting with a prospective client to discuss support to update their risk assessments.  This business employs over 200 employees and has a range of operations including vehicles, process lines, manual handling and chemicals amongst other activities.

We looked through the risk assessments they had and many dated back over the past 10 years.  Management had indicated that there were some more recent assessments but these could not be found.  What was clear was that the business has failed to understand the risk assessment process and the benefits to be achieved.

If they recognised the benefits of how to challenge the way things have always been done, they wouldn’t have waited 10 years to update them we would suggest.  Risk assessment should not be seen as a chore but used to improve operations.  In our experience,  asking the right questions cannot only improve safety standards but can also identify process improvements.

We discussed how we could best assist them to challenge their previous approach and get management to think differently.  We believe the key is to make sure that employees are involved and that they are fully briefed on the findings.  This way you can get proper engagement from the workforce and ultimately ownership.

Let’s be clear risk assessment is a mandatory legal requirement and needs to form the basis of any health & safety system.  Not keeping up to date is potentially a costly mistake and one we would suggest all businesses would do well to avoid.  Getting things wrong in today’s world really is not an option as the bad press that goes with a serious incident is often more damaging than the fines incurred.

Our experience has shown us that risk assessment done properly really can make a positive business benefit and should not be looked upon as a chore,  but to get there,  a key role will be to ensure that the management team understand not only how risks controls can be improved but also why it’s important to the business.

Our role is to advise on what the regulations require and help businesses make their assessments suitable and sufficient in the eyes of the law.  An important outcome will be to ensure that the business both understands the risk assessments and takes responsibility for keeping on top of them in future.