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I must have had this conversation, with small business owners and self-employed people a thousand times. And do you know what? When small business owners tell me that risk assessments are a total waste of time in their business, they are usually right! At least, the way they are doing them anyway! It’s the year 2020 in a few months time, and the humble risk assessment is still considered a total waste of time by a very significant proportion of business owners, and crucially by employees too. But why?
Misapplied and Misused
Throughout my time as a Health and Safety Auditor, and then later as a consultant, I spent thousands of hours in all manner of businesses, watching many employees working hard and for the most part, safely. I also witnessed ‘Health and Safety’ misapplied and misused in all manner of settings and blamed for all manner of (usually) unrelated problems. Risk assessments were often bought, borrowed or copied and filed, but rarely read or followed. But one thing that was almost universal was that risk assessments were misunderstood.
It is this misunderstanding of the purpose and the merits of a risk assessment which has led to them being sneered at and seen as a joke. Employers are legally required to risk assess, and as such often pay lip service to the process, but rarely are these assessments specific to the work or even accurate and in many cases aren’t followed. So why is such a seemingly simple concept so hard to understand or get right?
Dreamed up by idiots in suits?
The economy is tough, margins are tight, and time is money. Yep, all true. So did some idiot in a suit with nothing better to do dream up the risk assessment process, and then worse, make it a legal requirement without any idea of the real world? No, they didn’t BUT, I can see why some people may think that. When you are running a small business and are perhaps struggling a bit too, the last thing you want to worry about is anything that is bureaucratic rubbish that isn’t going to add anything to your business. So, what am I here to tell you, and why should you care?
How long is a piece of string?
How much risk do the activities in your business really represent? But much more importantly, how much of that risk are you happy to take responsibility for? The bottom line is, no matter what you do as a trade or business, there are risks to your employees and to the customers you interact with, which if left unchecked represent your cheque-book wide open with your signature already in place. Sounds overly dramatic right? Well, have a look at the Health and Safety Executive’s prosecution register (here) and look at all the fines that have been issued for all manner of breaches of the legislation. I don’t want this blog article to be a scare mongering one, so all I’ll say is this. If one of your employees or someone else who is interacting with your business, has a significant injury from an activity associated with your business, in many cases the fines and civil claims will easily be enough to end your business and bankrupt you. Not only that, but custodial sentences aren’t off the table either.
Quite apart from the financial aspects, where serious injury or even death occur, you will have to face the rest of your life knowing that you were responsible for it (at least in the eyes of the law). The obvious question then is, how do you limit your liability whilst fulfilling your moral obligation to protect your employees?
Line in the sand
Imagine you are stood on a vast beach, with the tide right out as far as you can see. The sand stretches off in every direction… infinitely. That sand, all of it represents your liability. All your employees are running around on that beach. They are free to do anything they like in any way they like, and whatever any of them do is your responsibility, you are liable for it, until you draw a line in that sand.
Draw your line in the sand!
Every day when you wake up, you are trying to make a living for yourself and your family, hopefully without causing anyone any harm. But here is the rub, if you have not risk assessed your business activities, or if you have non-specific or inadequate risk assessments that you are not following, your liability is stretching off ahead of you unchecked. Can you feel it? Maybe the new guy is in your yard, driving a forklift truck with a pallet of goods on it right now? Maybe your storeman is reaching for stock on the top shelf of your racking as you read this… Is the lift truck being driven well? Is the storeman stood on the very top of the ladder? If you haven’t done a good enough job of assessing the risks of these activities, and put simple controls in place, anything that happens to cause harm at this point is your responsibility as the employer!
Every activity carries a sliding scale of risk. Let’s take our storeman up his ladder for example. If he is using the correct ladder, which has been placed and set up properly, he is maintaining three points of contact and is no higher than where he can safely maintain his grip and balance, your risk is almost nil.
unsafe use of step ladder
But, if he is on an old wooden rung ladder, that is precariously propped against three tier pallet racking, he is stood right on the top rung, lifting down a heavy item with both hands…. your risk is huge! Without a simple but adequate risk assessment, the liability for both those scenarios fall on you as the employer… even if you aren’t there supervising them. Do you want that? Draw your line in the sand right now! – Your risk assessment, control measures and training set that boundary for you. You are in effect saying, “Dear employees and customers, I am happy to take responsibility for the activities you are undertaking up to this point HERE. If you cross this line, the responsibility for your actions rests with you.”
Generic doesn’t cut it
I was talking to a newly appointed Health and Safety representative for a small construction firm in Australia recently. She was telling me that she had been trained and appointed because her firm had recently been prosecuted by the State Government for a fall from height accident. The employee had fallen from a very low height, one not considered to be ‘high risk construction work’, so would have required lesser controls. Here was the problem, the old generic risk assessment that the boss pulled out when they were investigated stipulated edge protection they weren’t using.
By having a risk assessment, which stipulated certain control measures which the employee hadn’t put in place, the employer was deemed to have failed in their duty to control the risk. In other words, it was as bad as if they hadn’t got a risk assessment in the first place. Risk assessments must be specific to your work practices, so that you and your employees can easily follow them. Now, nothing stays the same is your business practices for very long does it? Which is also why you need to review your risk assessments regularly.
Make it simple and spell it out
Once you have looked at the activities in your business and decided which ones you feel that you need to limit the risk from, you need to put some controls in place. The golden rule is, the simpler the better, as then they are much more likely to be effective. In Health and Safety language, there is a thing called the hierarchy of control which gives you a straightforward process to follow when setting up your control measures. In short, you want to control the risk for as many people as possible, as easily as possible. That means asking yourself in the first instance, do we even need to do this activity at all? If you can eliminate the activity all together from the get-go, you have just had the quickest and easiest win! But often, its not that easy.
So, if you still need to have that activity done, then you need to find a way of controlling the risk at the source. What does that mean? Let’s say you have good ol’ Bertha the air compressor in your workshop. She’s been with you since the 70’s and she still provides enough pressure for those air-tools, so you really don’t want to replace her right?
Loud like dynamite!
The thing is… she’s loud, loud like dynamite, and she’s running on and off all day every day… so she’s a hearing damage case waiting to happen. How do you control that risk? You issue everyone with some ear defenders and make them promise faithfully to wear them, right?… Wrong. You need to control the risk for as many people as possible, in other words at source. You see, if you are relying on people to wear ear defenders, when there is an option that protects everyone all the time that is simpler, you are not complying with the law. (Human nature is such that they won’t wear them as often as they should). If you build a sound attenuation enclosure around ol’ Bertha, bring the decibel level down to a compliant number… you have complied with the law, protected everyone’s hearing and limited your liability!
There is a knack to it… but you can easily learn it
It may sound really hard to get right, but for the vast majority of businesses, its really not. And even better, there is a huge supply of resources out there to help you, including loads and loads of free ones on the Health and Safety Executives site. You really don’t need to spend a heap of money to get this done. I can’t recommend the HSE’s resources highly enough, and there are also companies out there who can help. Over the coming months I will be developing some really easy to use resources that will be available for you to download and use too. But for now, I would really suggest just reading around the topic on the HSE’s site and having a good honest go yourself. So, honestly, risk assessments really are not a waste of time! Have you already got good risk assessments? – then read this article for the next step!
Get involved
As you can see from the post, I am trying to give simple practical help to leaders wherever I can. I would love to hear your thoughts on the tips in this article, so it would be great if you could leave some comments below. Have you drawn your line in the sand by using risk assessments? Do you think risk assessments are a total waste of time? Let me know below!
I will be offering lots of pointers on this site as I develop the content and so let me know about anything you’d like me to cover too. I am also developing some great resources for leaders, and if you subscribe in the box at the top of this page, you’ll get FREE access to the new 32 page E-book, ‘New Leader Quick Start Guide’. If you want to establish yourself as a great leader and develop a creative motivated team, this E-book is for you!
See you for the next article!
Until next time
Greg Bennett is a Public Health Professional and
Leadership Coach
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