Risk Assesments

What is the difference between a hazard and a risk?

A hazard, in general, refers to anything with the potential to cause harm in terms of human injury or ill-health, damage to property, damage to the environment or a combination of these, e.g. chemical substances, machinery or methods of work, whereas risk means the likelihood, great or small, that an undesired event will occur due to the realisation of a hazard. Risk is dependent on the likelihood that a hazard may occur, together with the severity of the harm suffered/consequences. Risk is also dependent on the number of people who might be exposed to the hazard.

What is a Risk Assessment?

Section 19 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 requires that employers and those who control workplaces to any extent must identify the hazards in the workplaces under their control and assess the risks to safety and health at work presented by these hazards.
Employers must examine and write down these workplace risks and what to do about them. Ultimately, assessing risk means that anything in the workplace that could cause harm to your employees, other employees and other people (including customers, visitors and members of the public) must be carefully examined. This allows you to estimate the magnitude of risk and decide whether the risk is acceptable or whether more precautions need to be taken to prevent harm.
Employers are required to implement any improvements considered necessary by the risk assessment. The aim is to ensure that no one gets hurt or becomes ill.
However, it is important to remember that, in identifying hazards and assessing risks, employers should only consider those which are generated by work activities. There is no need to consider every minor hazard or risk that we accept as part of our lives.
The results of any risk assessments should be written into the safety statement.

Why is it important to carry out a Risk Assessment and prepare a Safety Statement?

The main aim is to make sure that no one gets hurt or becomes ill. Accidents and ill health can ruin lives, and can also affect business if output is lost, machinery is damaged, insurance costs increase, or if you have to go to court. Therefore, carrying out risk assessments, preparing and implementing a safety statement and keeping both up to date will not in themselves prevent accidents and ill health but they will play a crucial part in reducing their likelihood.
Employers, managers and supervisors should all ensure that workplace practices reflect the risk assessments and safety statement. Behaviour, the way in which everyone works, must reflect the safe working practices laid down in these documents. Supervisory checks and audits should be carried out to determine how well the aims set down are being achieved. Corrective action should be taken when required. Additionally, if a workplace is provided for use by others, the safety statement must also set out the safe work practices that are relevant to them.

Hence, it is important to carry out a Risk Assessment and prepare a Safety Statement for:

1. Financial reasons:
There is considerable evidence, borne out by companies’ practical experiences, that effective safety and health management in the workplace contributes to business success. Accidents and ill-health inflict significant costs, often hidden and underestimated.

2. Legal reasons:
Carrying out a risk assessment, preparing a safety statement and implementing what you have written down are not only central to any safety and health management system, they are required by law. Health and Safety Authority inspectors visiting workplaces will want to know how employers are managing safety and health. If they investigate an accident, they will scrutinise the risk assessment and safety statement, and the procedures and work practices in use. It should be ensured that these stand up to examination. If the inspector finds that one of these is inadequate, he or she can ask the employer to revise it. Employers can be prosecuted if they do not have a safety statement.

3. Moral and ethical reasons:
The process of carrying out a risk assessment, preparing a safety statement and implementing what you have written down will help employers prevent injuries and ill-health at work. Employers are ethically bound to do all they can to ensure that their employees do not suffer illness, a serious accident or death.

What does the law require regarding Risk Assessments and Safety Statements?

Every employer is required to manage safety and health at work so as to prevent accidents and ill-health. The Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 requires employers to:
• identify the hazards
• carry out a risk assessment
• prepare a written safety statement
This process has a practical purpose. It will help employers and other duty holders to manage employees’ safety and health, and get the balance right between the size of any safety and health problems and what has to be done about them. This is because the system must be risk-based; the required safety measures must be proportionate to the real risks involved and must be adequate to eliminate, control or minimise the risk of injury. The system must involve consultation between the employer and his/her employees, who are required by law to cooperate with the employer in the safety-management process.

Who is responsible for preparing the Risk Assessment and Safety Statement?

Those required to prepare a risk assessment and safety statement are:
• all employers
• those who control workplaces to any extent
• those who provide workplaces for use by others
• those who are self-employed

Who needs to read the Risk Assessments and Safety Statement?

The employer must ensure that the contents of the safety statement, which includes the risk assessments, is brought to the attention of all employees and others at the workplace who may be exposed to any risks covered by the safety statement. In particular, all new employees must be made aware of the safety statement when they start work. The statement must be in a form and language that they all understand.
Other people may be exposed to a specific risk dealt with in the safety statement and the statement should be brought to their attention. These people could include:
• outside contractors who do cleaning, maintenance or building work
• temporary workers
• delivery people who stack their goods in the premises and come in contact with activities there
• self-employed people who provide a service for the employer
Where specific tasks are carried out, which pose a serious risk to safety and health, the relevant contents of the safety statement must be brought to the attention of those affected, setting out the hazards identified, the risk assessments and the safety and health measures that must be taken.

How often does staff need to read the Risk Assessment and Safety Statement?

The relevant contents of the safety statement should be brought to the attention of the employees and others affected at least annually, and whenever it is revised. The employer has an ongoing responsibility to ensure that all relevant persons are aware of the safety statement and understand its terms. A campaign to discharge this responsibility could include a combination of written and verbal communication, including:
• distributing the safety statement, specific risk assessments or relevant sections of it to all employees when first prepared and whenever significant changes are made
• making the safety statement and specific risk assessments available electronically on company intranet sites which can be easily interrogated
• verbal communication of the terms of the safety statement or particular risk assessments
• inclusion of the relevant parts of the safety statement and specific risk assessments in employees’ handbooks or manuals
• through ongoing training

Who should carry out the Risk Assessment?

It is the employer’s duty, under section 19 of the 2005 Act, to carry out the risk assessment so you should try to do it yourself, while involving managers and employees as much as possible. Where the in-house expertise is not available, employ the services of an external competent person to help. Check that they are familiar with and have the ability to assess specific work activities. Involve as many employees as possible in order to encourage them to share ownership of the finished assessments.

Is there any formula used to assess risk?

There are various qualitative and quantitative methods for carrying out risk assessment. Choose one which best suits the organisation. A generic format for carrying out risk assessments in tabular form is given in the Appendix of the HSA's Guidelines on Risk Assessment and Safety Statements here
Additionally, guidelines on determining risk and how to rate the likely effects of hazards and the likelihood of harm can be found in Appendix C of the HSA's Workplace Safety and Health Management publication.

What factors affect the level of risk?

• Risk will depend on many, often related, circumstances such as:
• Who is exposed to the hazard?
• Is the hazard likely to cause injury to workers or others?
• How serious would the injury be?
• Is the hazard well controlled?
• Is the level of supervision adequate?
• How long are people exposed, and what levels of exposure should not be exceeded?

Who needs to be considered in the risk assessment, other than employees, with regards to who may be harmed?

Apart from employees, think about people who may not be in the workplace all the time, for example:
• cleaners
• visitors
• contractors
• outside maintenance personnel
• customers
• others (such as students in a school)
• members of the public or people who share the workplace, if there is a chance they could be hurt by the work activities
Particular attention must be paid to staff with disabilities, visitors, inexperienced staff, workers who do not have English as a first language and lone workers.
If changes such as new plant, new working practices or new materials occur in the workplace, the employer must carry out a new risk assessment, implement any necessary improvements and update the safety statement accordingly. The risk assessments and any subsequent revisions must be brought to the attention of everyone affected by them.

How do I assess risk to travelling or multi-site workers?

The risk assessment and safety statement should relate to the place of work. Where workers will be working away from their normal base, the risk assessment and safety statement should address the type of work to be performed in that place of work.
It may not be practical to have the full safety statement or risk assessment at particular workplaces or certain work activities (e.g. at roadworks or working on a roof). In these cases a simplified method statement or work procedure, which covers the risks at hand, is sufficient, provided that employees are familiar with their own safety statement.
The Authority has produced a Safe System of Work Plan to help supervisors and workers in the construction industry to carry out simple risk assessments for many types of construction work.

How can an employer control risk?

Employers are required to do all that is reasonably practicable to minimise the risk of injury or damage to the safety and health of their employees. Employers will have done all that is reasonably practicable if they have:
• exercised care in putting in place necessary preventive measures
• have identified the hazards and risks relating to the place of work
• have put in place appropriate measures such that it would be grossly disproportionate to do more
Some common methods of controlling risk are:
• replacing a hazardous system, e.g. using mechanical aids to reduce or eliminate the need for manual handling
• replacing a substance with a less hazardous substance, e.g. replacing a flammable with a non-flammable substance
• designing the workplace to reduce risk, e.g. providing guardrails around roof-mounted equipment or designated walkways and crossing points through areas with moving vehicles
• ensuring a clean and tidy workplace to prevent trips and slips
• extracting or containing the hazard at source, e.g. providing a fume cupboard with extraction
• adapting the work to the individual, e.g. providing adjustable height tables or chairs to reduce muscle injuries
• ventilating an area of the workplace where extraction at source is not possible
• isolating the process or the worker, e.g. switching off and isolating machines before carrying out repairs or alterations
• safeguarding machinery, e.g. providing interlocked guards that switch off the machine if someone tries to gain entry to dangerous parts of it
• providing adequate training and supervision
• establishing emergency planning procedures, including first aid
• providing protective equipment, clothing or signs (they should be used only as a last resort after all other ways of eliminating the hazard have been fully explored)
• setting up adequate health surveillance programmes including pre-placement or regular health checks where appropriate
• analysing and investigating accidents (including ill-health) and dangerous occurrences
• using permit-to-work systems or safe working procedures
• putting in place adequate welfare facilities
• establishing other policies as appropriate, e.g. to eradicate bullying, etc.

Are there any factors to be considered in specific Risk Assessments?

Different workplace settings will identify differing hazards, dependent on the work activities being carried out. Therefore, assorted control measures shall be considered for the various risks in such workplaces, e.g.:
Risk of a slip, trip or fall, e.g. all workplaces:
Slips, trips and falls are the second most common type of accident in most places of work. The risk depends on:
• the premises being kept clean, tidy and uncluttered
• the flooring and stairs being kept in good repair and on the type of flooring used
• the control of other trip hazards
• the quality of lighting
• spillages of liquid being cleaned promptly
The extent of injury may vary from relatively minor to severe, depending on a variety of factors including the nature of the fall, whether at the level or from a height.
Risk of being struck by a fork-lift truck, e.g. warehouses, factories:
Vehicles in the workplace are a risk to other employees on foot. The risk is a combination of the chance that someone will be struck, together with the likely severity of the injury. This will depend on:
• whether pedestrians use walkways which keep them away from moving fork-trucks
• the number of pedestrians and fork-lift trucks using the same areas
• the training and instruction provided to both drivers and pedestrians
• the degree of supervision and enforcement of safe procedures (e.g. for separating pedestrians and forklifts)
• the mechanical condition of the fork-lift truck (e.g. brakes and flashing beacons)
• the wearing of high-visibility PPE
Risk of exposure to isocyanate paint, e.g. garages:

Paints containing isocyanates are a hazard to health. The material safety data sheet (MSDS) and the label on the paint container give this information. Breathing in isocyanate fumes can cause asthma. The risk is a combination of the chance that someone’s lungs will be damaged together with the extent of the likely damage. This will depend on:
• the amount of isocyanate in the air
• how often the job is done (all day every day or once or twice a year)
• the work method – how the paint is used (e.g. if it is sprayed the risk will be greater than if brushed on)
• the number of people that could be affected (i.e. does just one person work with the paint or do many? Could their work affect others?)
• what could go wrong (the errors that could lead to spillage and atmospheric emissions).
• the adequacy of precautions taken, such as exhaust ventilation and personal protective equipment (Do they comply with the legal requirements? How do they compare with good practice and national or ‘trade’ guidance?)
The extent of the likely damage is severe. An employee could develop asthma, which might make him or her unemployable in that industry.
Permit-to-work systems:
A permit-to-work system is a written system of the procedures which must be taken to safeguard workers doing work such as repair, maintenance or cleaning work in potentially dangerous areas. It involves mechanical, electrical or process isolation procedures or monitoring the atmosphere for the presence of dangerous fumes. It sets out in a systematic way the work to be done, the hazards involved and the precautions to be taken.
Situations where this is necessary include when machinery could be restarted with the worker still inside it, or working in confined spaces where there is a danger of chemical or physical contamination.
The employer should write down in the safety statement what work activities require a permit-to-work system. Employers may also need to consider the Confined Space Regulations and any associated Codes of Practice.

Is anyone exempt from carrying out a risk assessment and/or preparing a safety statement?

A risk assessment must always be prepared for that place of work. However, if 3 or fewer people are employed and a code of practice relating to safety statements, prepared by the Authority, exists for a sector or work activity, then compliance with that code is sufficient.