COMMUNICATION WORKERS UNION

Risk Assessment - A Guide For Safety Representatives

Further to LTB 368/08 and the resources circulated with that LTB, Risk assessment is the theme for European Health and Safety week 2008 which forms part of a two-year European Campaign for Safety and Health at Work focusing on risk assessment. 

As a positive contribution to the campaign, the TUC has produced an excellent guide to risk assessment entitled "Risk Assessment - A Guide To Safety Representatives" to ensure that safety reps have the necessary tools to ensure their employer has done a suitable risk assessment, as well as taken appropriate measures to implement the measures required.

It should also help safety reps to challenge the employer and managers if they do not do a suitable assessment or do not act to remove the hazards identified in the risk assessment.
Risk assessment is the process used to identify hazards in the workplace and assess the likelihood that these hazards will cause harm to workers and others.

It is part of a systematic approach employers and managers are required by law to adopt in order to manage health and safety effectively. Workplace risks should never be seen as inevitable and if risk assessments are done correctly – and employers implement them fully – then it means that hazards are identified and removed or considerably reduced.

A properly managed workplace should be both safe and healthy. The employer has a responsibility to identify risks and take reasonably practical measures to minimise them.
The law says that every employer has to conduct a risk assessment on the work their employees do and take reasonably practical measures to ensure their workers are not put at risk. That means removing or reducing the hazards that can put people at risk.

It is important that union safety reps are involved and consulted on the process of risk assessment, and they should always be asked to comment on assessments, although the responsibility for doing a risk assessment lies fully with management.
The risk assessment process is simple. It is:

• an examination of the work and workplace to identify what could cause harm to people (a hazard); and
• an assessment of the chance, high or low, that somebody could be harmed by the hazards identified, together with an indication of how serious the harm could be (the risk).

On the basis of this assessment a decision is made as to what prevention or control measures should be taken to prevent the possibility of harm.

There is no single method of risk assessment that covers all types of workplaces and different employers will use different methods. Some of these are explained later in this booklet. However, every method involves decisions being made on how acceptable a risk is. This, whatever management may say, is not a scientific process but instead is one based on the value that they place on the safety and health of their workers.

It is therefore important Safety Reps understand the method of risk assessment your employer is using and ensure that the process deals with the issues that concern members promptly and reflect the real risks in the workplace, including long-term health risks.

A hard copy of the guide to Branches and Regional Health and Safety Forums in pdf format can be downloaded here

Source: LTB769/08