Risk Assessments—love them or hate them—are one of the core principles of successful Health and Safety Management. If you don’t know what the risks are in your business, how on earth are you going to manage them?
How to find a Safety Consultant
But hang on a minute; where do you start? You’re busy, and you’ve done a risk assessment before. What if you miss something? So you jump on the HSE website and start searching for the best place to find safety consultants. OHSCR register of consultants and start contacting them and enquiring. For example, you can check mine out here
Tick box exercise?
You find a safety consultant who seems to fit the bill. They seem to fit with your business and have good experience, and you commission them to complete your risk assessments. The following day, you get a suite of professional-looking documents, and you’re over the moon. The box is ticked, and you don’t have to worry about risk assessments anymore, or do you?
The new risk assessments go into a folder and live there forever, gathering dust on sagging shelves.
You think you’re compliant when, in fact, you might not be, and this isn’t a scaremongering tactic. You need to ensure that box has been ticked but is also suitable and sufficient.
How you should manage risk assessments.
Quite often, clients approach Terra Firma 360 to write their risk assessments. We’re always happy to provide this service, but whether you use us or another service, there are a few things that everyone should know that we would like to share and that may help you and your business in the future.
Specific
- Are getting risk assessments specific to your business or are they generic documents. Generic means that you will have to edit them to suit your business; if they’re not generic, you must dedicate some time to working with your chosen safety consultant.
Consultant’s Competency
- Start by checking out the consultant’s competencies and ask for samples of previous risk assessments they have conducted. Speak about some issues that are bespoke to your industry and see if they know about that topic. Note, the consultant shouldn’t give details of another company (unless made up). After all, how would you feel if your information was shared? Can they offer ideas for solutions based on their experience?
Working together
- Help your consultant to help you.
- Invite the consultant to your workplace and have your safety documentation ready.
- Be able to provide them access to all areas that need assessing.
- Let them speak with your team so, that they can find out about tasks and the real story.
Action Plan
- Ask for an action plan to help you manage the risks in a reasonably practicable manner, as identified by the safety consultant.
Read the risk assessments
- Read the risk assessments and check you agree with the findings, and discuss them with your consultant.
Updates
- Find out how to update the risk assessments as you complete the actions or if the consultancy provides this service.
Support
- Does the consultant provide ongoing support services, such as Competent Person, which provides telephone and email support and a variety of other services? Can the Health and Safety consultant support you if a workplace accident happens on-site, or can they review your progress on a regular basis?
Train your team
- Later, train some of your team to carry out safety duties, and risk assessment. The more eyes and ears you have, the better.
Legal document
- Remember that a risk assessment is a legal document used as legal evidence in a civil (personal claims) or a criminal court. Could you honestly defend the contents of your risk assessment?
Make Risk Assessments work for your business.
A risk assessment is a live document, in other words it will always change with your business and what is happening. It is important to get it right and ensure that your investment truly protects people and it works for you.
You can make it a paperwork exercise or risk assessment, which can be a great way of managing the real risks in your workplace, increasing your business reputation, and engaging your workforce.
Check out our Risk assessment service
