The Five Steps of Risk Assesment

500 Words2 Pages
What are the five steps to risk assessment? Step 1: Identify hazards, i.e. anything that may cause harm Employers have a duty to assess the health and safety risks faced by their workers. Your employer must systematic ally check for possible physical, mental, chemical and biological hazards. This is one common classification of hazards: • Physical: lifting, awkward postures, slips and trips, noise, dust, machinery, computer equipment. • Mental: excess workload, long hours, working with high-need clients, bullying. These are also called 'psychosocial' hazards, affecting mental health and occurring within working relationships. • Chemical: asbestos, cleaning fluids, aerosols. • Biological: including tuberculosis, hepatitis and other infectious diseases faced by healthcare workers, home care staff and other healthcare professionals. Step 2: Decide who may be harmed, and how Identifying who is at risk starts with your organisation's own full- and part-time employees. Employers must also assess risks faced by agency and contract staff visitors, clients and other members of the public on their premises. Employers must review work routines in all the different locations and situations where their staff are employed. For example: • The homecare supervisors must take due account of their client's personal safety in the home, and ensure safe working and lifting arrangements for their own home care staff. • In a supermarket, hazards are found in the repetitive tasks at the checkout, in lifting loads, and in slips and trips from spillages and obstacles in the shop and storerooms. Staff faces the risk of violence from customers and intruders, especially in the evenings. • In call centres, workstation equipment (desk, screen, keyboard, and chair) must be adjusted to suit each employee. Employers have special duties towards the health and safety of young workers,
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