Most of the incidents are avoidable with intense concern and preparation. And mostly they are caused by one of these common risk assessment blunders. Once you know them, and avoid them, you’ll be many times safer.
- No Risk Assessment!
Ok, obvious we know. But so common it has to be mentioned. Your very first step is to begin.
- Not Properly Identifying the Hazards
When assessments are carried out, for the various reasons below they often don’t properly identify and mitigate the threats on your site or workplace. To help spot them, here are some of the biggest culprits in cement industry:
Dangerous work at height without safety precautions
Power tools have inadequate safety guards
Exposure to toxic fumes, most commonly from chemicals in QC laboratory
Silica dust clouds created and breathed in due to Electrostatic precipitator failure
Workplace transport ill-organized and dangerous
- Creating an Inadequate Risk Assessment
Make sure you don’t rush the job. The health of your workers may well one day depend on it. As guided by the standard practices, your assessment needs you to:
Identify what can harm people in your workplace;
Identify who might be harmed and how;
Evaluate the risks and decide on the appropriate controls, taking into account the controls you already have in place;
Record your risk assessment;
And review and update your assessment nice and regularly.
When you’ve done this, entire good job but don’t stop there! Watch out for big blunder number four;
- Assuming Safety Because You Have a Document
The documenting of risks is just the first step. Many business owners relax into a false sense of security once a document lies on their desktop.
But it’s not the time to get comfy; it’s only the first step.
Those potential workplace threats you found have to be diligently removed or mitigated with solid safety precautions. And this will be greatly helped if you don’t do blunder five too;
- Not Involving Your Employees
Your people are the ones to benefit most from the assessment, being the ones at risk of an accident. Don’t feel like this whole process is purely some admin thing to be kept away from them.
Ask your employees what they think. Involve them every step of the way, and they will actively help you to mitigate the risks later. Or at least they’ll be much more accepting to any rules and procedures you enforce for safety.
And last common blunder, but certainly not least;
- Assessing Risk Generically; Not Specific to Your Workplace
Involving your employees will also help you to avoid this one. Make sure the workplace risk assessment is very carefully targeted to your site and workplace.
The more relevant it is, the more effective and easy to adopt it will be.
Now it’s Your Turn
How did you find your workplace risk assessments? Think about it