Risk assessment involves you, the employer, looking at the risks that arise in the workplace and then putting sensible health and safety measures in place to control them.
By doing this you can protect your most valuable asset, your employees, as well as members of the public from harm.
A practical approach
Risk assessments should be about identifying practical actions that protect people from harm and injury, not a bureaucratic experience. For the majority of risk assessments, short bullet points work well.
Making a risk assessment
The HSE example risk assessments show you what a record of a risk assessment might look like. If your industry is not listed, pick the one closest to it and adapt it for your workplace.
Covid-19 risk assessment
All businesses must carry out a health and safety risk assessment looking at what could cause harm to staff and customers and what they can do to reduce the risk of harm. The control of Covid-19 transmission by social distancing and infectious disease control is now a hazard that must be considered within this risk assessment and businesses must demonstrate what practices are in place to control this and in some instances, this must be documented. In addition to the Government and Public Health England guidance businesses can visit The Health and Safety Executive website to help them develop documentation/procedures for Covid-19.
To support your risk assessment please refer to the documents on:
- Customer Track and Trace Records (.pdf, 24.7kB)
- Staff Coronavirus Questionnaire (.pdf, 123.7kB)
- Customer Coronavirus Questionnaire (.pdf, 174.7kB)