Effective Risk Assessments

Two reports have been published recently which together should be a real encouragement for anyone who is passionate about improving health and safety in the workplace.

European Experience

The first comes from the 'European Agency for Safety and Health at Work' who have conducted extensive research into the beneficial impact of risk assessment across all European states.

The report should not be dismissed as theoretical or merely of academic interest since it is based on a wide and varied range of practical case studies, covering areas such as manufacturing, engineering, forestry, mining, packaging, and office work.

From these success stories, the report distils out a number of principles for successful health and safety in the workplace based on the Risk Assessment approach. By relating the principles to their own situations, many organisations and businesses should be able to identify potential improvements in their own health and safety performance, often without incurring excessive increases of effort or cost.

In particular, the report focuses on two extremely important principles of risk management:

Eliminate the risk entirely (or to insignificantly low levels) where practicable
Where elimination is not practicable, introduce solutions that reduce the risk at source

Application of these two principles are generally more successful at improving health and safety than any other approaches to risk management.

The European report is titled "Assessment, Elimination and Substantial Reduction of Occupational Risks" and can be viewed or downloaded from
http://osha.europa.eu/en/publications/reports/TEWE09001ENC

UK Experience

For solid evidence of the huge impact of good risk management, it is worth looking at the latest statistics from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which cover the period from April 2008 to March 2009.

The UK can take some pride in the achievements of safer workplaces since the introduction of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. However, improvements are still being made, as can be demonstrated by figures from the HSE for this latest period compared with the previous year:

	2007/08	2008/09
Fatalities	229	180
Other Injuries	136,771	131,8958
Ill Health	1.3 million	1.2 million
Days Lost	34 million	29.3 million

Obviously there is far more to consider than the simple figures quoted above and there is certainly no room for complacency. However, the steady progress is certainly encouraging.

The UK HSE Report is titled "Health and Safety Statistics 2008/09" and can be viewed or downloaded from http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/overall/hssh0809.pdf

Risk Assessment

For maximum impact, risk assessments must be much more than paper exercises. If they are to reduce fatalities, accidents and ill health in the workplace, there need to be a number of factors in place, as highlighted in these reports. They include:

Strong motivation, particularly on the part of top management to make all necessary resources available.
High level of trust and participation on the part of all parties.
Careful assessment to ensure the results of risk analysis are accurate and comprehensive.
Good capability and experience in identifying the most appropriate solutions that will eliminate or reduce risks as far as reasonably practicable.

Contact EDP for training or support in effective use of Risk Assessments in health and safety.

To discuss your requirements, without any obligation on your part, please gives us a call on 01744 766000 or complete the Enquiry Form on our website.

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