- State your own duties under health and safety law
- Work through the five steps of a risk assessment
- Know what to report, to whom, and how quickly
Two duties, one shared job
Under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 your employer must keep you safe so far as is reasonably practicable. You in turn must take reasonable care of yourself and others, and co-operate with the arrangements in place.
"Reasonably practicable" is the phrase that does the work. It means the effort has to be proportionate to the risk, not that anything difficult is excused.
Hazard, risk, control
A hazard is something with the potential to cause harm. A risk is how likely that harm is and how bad it would be.
The five steps of a risk assessment:
- Identify the hazards.
- Decide who might be harmed, and how.
- Evaluate the risk and decide on controls.
- Record what you found and did.
- Review it, especially after any change.
Controls follow a hierarchy. Remove the hazard first, then substitute, then engineer it out, then change how people work, and only then rely on protective equipment. Equipment is the last line, not the first.
A trailing cable across a doorway has been there for two days. Nobody has tripped yet. What is the right response?
Reporting: near misses count
Report accidents, injuries and near misses through your organisation's system. Near misses are free lessons and the most under-reported category by far.
Some incidents are reportable by the employer to the Health and Safety Executive under RIDDOR, including deaths, specified serious injuries, injuries keeping a worker off normal duties for more than seven days, and certain dangerous occurrences. You do not need to know the list. You need to report promptly so the person who does can decide.
5 questions. Pick an answer to see whether it is right and why.
1.A hazard is:
2.In the hierarchy of control, personal protective equipment is:
3.How many steps are in the standard risk assessment approach?
4.A near miss with no injury should be:
5.'So far as is reasonably practicable' means:
Name one hazard in your own workplace that everyone has stopped noticing.
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