Assessing health and safety risks

1. Look for risks

Together with your staff, look for risks your work may cause. This includes:

obvious things such as unsafe machinery
less obvious issues that might affect people's health, such as stress, poor air quality and fatigue.

Involving staff is an important way to help identify and manage risk.

Personal or family matters, including family violence, may also threaten the safety and productivity of your workplace.

The It's Not OK website provides information on how your workplace can play a role in preventing family violence and create workplace safety plans for employees experiencing family violence. It also has tips for employers and managers.

Are you OKMinistry of Social Development Raising a health and safety issue

2. Assess the risks

With your staff, consider:

how much harm these risks pose
how likely they are to happen.

Apart from just the possible risk to people who work for you, you should also be thinking about who else might be affected – for example visitors, customers, contractors and neighbouring businesses.

Workplace health and safetyACC

3. Prioritise identified risks

The more potential for harm, the more significant the risk. For example, having systems for storing and using chemicals the right way is more important than focusing on safe lifting of items that are very light.

Remember that health and safety is ongoing. Just because you start with the most serious risks, it doesn't mean you shouldn't deal with the less serious ones later.

Also keep an eye out for occupational health issues, for example:

harassment
uncomfortably hot or cold temperatures
excessive workloads.

Managing risksWorkSafe

4. Study the risks

Think about what you and your staff know, or should know, about the identified risks. This may also involve talking to people in the same line of work as you, sector bodies like Registered Master Builders and Federated Farmers, or WorkSafe.

WorkSafe has specific guidelines on many identified risks. Some examples include:

working on roofs
riding quad bikes
working safely at height.

For these types of work activities, specific practices should be followed.

Industry guidelinesWorkSafe

5. Consider your options

Talk with your staff about the ways you could eliminate the risk. If it's impossible to get rid of it altogether, you need to think about how you could minimise it.

For example, it might be impossible to get rid of a loud noise altogether. However, you could minimise its effect by relocating noisy equipment, using high-grade ear protection, or a different tool.

When working out what you're going to do, think about:

how bad the harm could be
different ways it could be avoided or controlled
the suitability of the protection
the cost.

Dealing with the risk could be anything from buying new equipment, changing your work methods, or simply having a chat with staff. Take responsibility for what you can control.

Requirements for workplacesWorkSafe