ESG Metric: Employee health and safety
Ease of implementation: Medium
Suitable for: All businesses
Suggested functional lead: HR
Summary
A risk assessment must be carried out by all organisations to protect their employees by identifying risk and hazards in the workplace. The types of hazards must be identified and the likelihood of them occurring, the risk, must be assessed and controlled. All findings must be recorded in a Risk Assessment with the aim to continuously update and improve the controls put in place to reduce risk and hazard.
Background Information
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulation was set up in 1999 ensuring, by law, that all employers protect their employees from harm. The minimum requirements are to identify the potential hazards, determine the risk of likelihood of the hazard and take action to eliminate the potential hazard. If the hazard cannot be eliminated, the risk must be controlled to ensure the likelihood of the hazard is as low as possible. All industries in every sector must produce a risk assessment and report their findings and incidences.
Implementation Steps
Identify hazard
Start off by assessing how people work daily and what equipment is being used. Determine if any chemicals and substances are being used and how safe current work practices are. Assess the overall state of the premises as well and how any visitors or contractors may be harmed. It is helpful to analyse previous health records and identify any patterns and obvious hazards.
Assess and control risk
Identify how likely it is for an employee to be harmed and the degree to the harm to assess the level of risk. Identify what practices are in place already to control the risk and identify how it can be improved to either eliminate or further reduce the risk. If this does not reduce the level of risk, consider redesigning the job, replacing materials, provide personal protection equipment and new measured to work safely.
Record findings in Risk Assessment
Any business that employer over five people must record their finding. The recordings must include the hazards itself as well as who might be harmed and how. You must also outline the steps you are taking to control the risk. Click here to access the UK government risk assessment template and examples.
Review controls
Review the controls put in place to reduce risk and hazard to ensure they are affective. This is specifically important when changes occur in the workplace which may lead to new risks. These changes could range from an increase or decrease in staff to a change in substances of equipment used. Review any processes that have been identified by employees and upgrade the risk assessment accordingly.