Why is it important to review risks?
As a business owner or manager, it’s your duty to ensure the safety of all your employees as Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HSWA) states that employers have a general duty of care to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of all their employees.
Health surveillance is about having procedures in place to detect work-related ill-health at an early stage and acting on the results (HSE, 2005).
By conducting risk assessments regularly, you’ll be able to spot and highlight any hazards or risks so that you can make necessary changes to help secure your employees safety. There are no set guidelines as to when you should be having health surveillance in your work place, however we recommend it to be a regular thing that should be a part of a routine.
When should you review risks?
You should be scheduling annual reviews so that you have at least one assessment a year. As well as that, you need to be having risk assessments whenever there’s a change in legislation. This is so that your company stays compliant with any new laws or regulations.
Whenever there’s a change in tasks such as new equipment being used or a change in site, you should be conducting a risk assessment as HSE says you need to be conducting a new risk assessment whenever there’s “new machines, substances, and procedures, which could lead to new hazards”
It’s crucial to have an assessment anytime there’s an accident or near miss. This will identify the hazards so that you can make the changes needed to stop any similar incidents from occurring again.
If your employees or members of public are making complaints or reports, you should be having fresh risk assessments as there may be something you might have missed.
A new risk assessment is also recommended when there’s been a change to an individual employee’s health for example, if an employee is pregnant it’s wise to review risks.
If a prior risk assessment identifies risks in your workplace, when improvements are made a follow up assessment should be conducted just to review any of the changes introduced.
We’re here to help
At Healthscreen, we provide up to 14 different health surveillance services to suit any working condition whether it’s confined spaces to noisy work conditions.
We can also provide specialist occupational health services such as noise risk assessments and workplace assessments.
Get in touch to find out more or call us on 01455 243700 or send an email to admin@healthscreenuk.co.uk
