20 August 2020

Plan your return – the importance of risk assessing your business

As businesses rebuild and with staff returning back to work, health and safety legal requirements as an employer remain the same, and you must protect people from harm. We're aware the HSE have already stepped into many member sites - please be prepared with documented risk assessments, actions undertaken as a result of the hazards identified and protocols of instruction briefed out to your employees and visitors to site.

Whilst we're still mid-pandemic, under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, the minimum you must do is to take reasonable steps to protect your workers and others from the virus, by undertaking specific COVID-19 risk assessments. By completing these you'll be able to manage risk and protect people within your workplace by taking appropriate actions.

We must appreciate that working life will be different, and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has stated that, "Work is likely to be organised differently from how it was before lockdown - the Law requires all employers to assess the risk of returning to work while the coronavirus outbreak is ongoing and to put steps in place to manage that risk."

The risk assessment process is also essential to ensure employee confidence is managed, therefore this work should commence prior to staff returning to the workplace. You must;

• Identify the hazards - identify what work activity or situations might cause transmission of the virus
• Define the risk - think about who could be at risk and how likely it is that someone could be exposed
• Eliminate the hazard - act to remove the activity or situation, or if this isn't possible, control the risk

We've simplified the full process to become COVID-Secure with risk assessments documented within Step 3 of the COVID-Secure Road Map. To go to Step 3 and start your risk assessments, please click here.