This is a procedure used to identify hazards and risks in the workplace. The assessment also identifies those risks that are significant, who is at risk and how to control reduce the risk.

What is a hazard? this is anything that has the potential to cause harm, loss or damage

What is a risk? this is the likelihood of a hazard being realised

Why do we Assess Risk?

There are a number of reasons why we risk assess:

• it is a legal requirement (Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, regulation 3)

• being able to identify hazards and risks will help reduce the level of accidents

• it can improve quality of the workplace and the working conditions

• by providing a safer working environment can help improve moral

• they can be used in the allocation of resources, both in the control of a hazard or in the prevention of the risks involved with a particular hazard

• it is good management practice to take all practicable steps to prevent accidents or loss in the workplace.

Failure of assessing the risk means:

• non compliance with the law resulting in fines, imprisonment and adverse publicity

• claims and compensation resulting from injury or even death

• the cost of accidents are expensive due to the loss of trained and competent staff and the costs associated with implementing corrective measures

Risk Assessment is not a complicate process, it is more about common sense and your knowledge of the tasks and workplace.

While in the office, we’re probably thinking about everything apart from the most important aspect of our lives: our health. High standards of health and safety at work are key to maintaining good health as we work through to the end of our careers and approach retirement. Poor posture, repetitive wrist movements, and excessive sitting can all combine to pose serious health risks as we grow older.

Not moving enough while we work can increase our risk of suffering from illnesses such as carpal tunnel, arthritis, diabetes and even cancer as we grow older. Here are the steps you need to take to implement health and safety measures that will protect your staff from these serious health risks.

Get Your Staff Moving

Taking breaks from their desks will help your staff to deliver you great results while safeguarding their health. People shouldn’t spend more than 30 minutes continuously sitting down. By creating large, open-plan working environments that encourage staff to move around in order to work together on various projects, you will create a healthier working environment for your people.

You’ll also ensure that your workspace complies with the very latest health and safety regulations. It’s also important that you encourage staff to take as much exercise during the day as they possibly can. Including gym memberships as an employment benefit is a fantastic way to encourage your people to stay as active as possible and to ensure that sitting at work has a little detrimental impact on their long-term health as possible.

Promote Good Posture

How your people sit while they work is pivotal to their maintenance of a healthy lifestyle. Their style of sitting is also pivotal to your business’s maintenance of an excellent health and safety record. For that reason, there are some important regulations in place regarding appropriate seating in offices. DSE regulations require all seats in offices to come with height adjustment including back height and tilt adjustment. They must also have a swivel mechanism and casters (or glides).

If your teams are forced to use seats that don’t fulfill these requirements, you are exposing your business to potential regulatory penalties for failure to comply with health and safety regulations, as well as possible legal action if staff members forced to use this furniture become ill and can directly link their illness to the posture they regularly adopted while working for you.

Therefore, it is your responsibility to choose the furniture in your office with immense care. Far too many employers just buy the cheapest chairs that they can find and assume that they will suffice for their staff. This poor-quality furniture won’t do the job. You need to invest in your office furniture to create a healthy workplace for your staff.

Make Sure Laptops Aren’t Ruining Your People’s Posture

Far too often, staff squint over laptops, arching their backs and unknowingly damaging their health in the process. Unfortunately, this also means that their employers have breached health and safety regulations. Laptops should be used in the same way as desktop computers. When they use laptops in your office, you should ensure that your employees place them on risers, so that they are able to work on these computers while maintaining excellent posture. Wherever possible, you should also attach a separate mouse and keyboard to your laptop, so that you can operate it in the same way that you would use a desktop computer.

Do You Need A Risk Assessment

Arrelle’s expert risk assessors are more than happy to provide you with all of the guidance you need to ensure that you’re protected from any DSE risks your business may be facing. Far too many business put off their risk assessments, leaving themselves exposed to huge liabilities, health and safety regulatory penalties and legal disputes later down the line. Our risk assessors use their expertise to examine every swivel of your chairs and the exact height of your monitors to identify risks that other risk assessors may not be able to. The result is that our assessors’ advice has saved businesses across the UK huge amounts of money.

If you need our expert advice to meet health and safety at work and DSE regulations so that an increasingly digital working environment doesn’t leave your people facing long-term health issues, please get in touch with one of our health and safety risk assessors today.

Treating your health and safety advice in this way will actually end up costing you more money over the long-term. An experienced health and safety risk assessor will be able to save you an enormous amount of money each year. Here’s why:

Experts Fix The Difficult Things Easily

An experienced health and safety risk assessor will be able to cover absolutely everything. By everything, we mean the obvious things, like trip hazards so that your people are safe at work, and the not so obvious things, like the small print on administrative forms so that your business is protected from regulatory fines and other penalties.

The amount of money that you can save while being protected from falling onto a hard floor and into a regulatory quagmire simultaneously is incredible. Health and safety is not a topic that often excites entrepreneurs as they’re growing their businesses, but it needs to be sorted.

Any gaps in your health and safety provision could leave you facing huge legal liabilities and further costs as well as risking serious injury to yourself and your staff. In other words, cutting costs here could leave you open to several years of expensive legal proceedings, that cost more than quality HSE advice would have done in the first place. A simple risk assessment will save you from all of this hassle.

They’re Available When You Need Them

Better still, the best risk assessors will provide you with handbooks and other resources, giving you constant 24/7 access to a wealth of knowledge on health and safety issues whenever you need it. They can also offer phone consultations, Skype consultations and multi-site personal visits, to be there whenever you need expert advice.

Having an expert on-call gives you invaluable access to innovative solutions to any issues you’re facing within hours of their arising, giving you more time to spend growing your business. What’s not to love?

They Explain Points Clearly And Effectively

The last thing any business owner wants to do is to pay for advice, and then be told lots of jargon that’s impossible to understand and leaves them even more confused about the complex issues they need to get resolved urgently, than they were before asking for advice.

A genuine expert will understand their topic well enough to explain it clearly every time, so that you can implement their advice promptly and move your business forward as quickly as possible. That gives you peace of mind and value for money, which is exactly what you’re paying them for.

At Arrelle, we’ve made straightforward, comprehensive advice our trademark alongside quality client service. You’ll always know where you are with us, both metaphorically and literally. If you need us to, we’ll comb through your entire premises, highlighting any health and safety risks on site; placing the right signs in the right places and making sure that your paperwork ticks all the boxes.

Whether you need general advice, personalised, sector-specific handbooks, a series of personal visits, or risk assessments our experienced team will create a bespoke plan that keeps your business fully compliant with evolving HSE legislation and regulations.