Risk Management

The law requires that you manage workplace health and safety by taking a risk management approach to hazards.

This approach, in fact, is at the very core of effective health and safety.  It can be applied in any industry sector and in businesses of any size – from the very smallest, to the very largest.  It involves:

• identifying the hazards, along with their associated risks, in your workplace
• prioritising them by assessing the likelihood of them occurring, along with their potential for harm
• ‘controlling’ them (i.e. working out whether you can eliminate the hazard or hazards altogether or whether the associated risk can be minimised in some way
• putting in place the ‘controls’ you have identified
• reviewing the situation periodically to make sure nothing has changed and to ensure that the controls you implemented are still working.

WorkSafe ACT has two publications to assist with risk management:

• Six Steps to Risk Management and  
• “The Safe Risk Management Model” that is part of Making Your Small Business Safer and Healthier.

Below is a brief outline of "The Safe Risk Management Model" that follows four simple steps of spot the hazard, assess the risk, fix the problem and evaluate the results (SAFE).

Step 1 - Spot the hazard

Walk around the workplace and identify any hazards that may potentially cause an injury, illness or damage to health 

(see checklists and risk assessment sheets on our Checklists page)

Step 2 - Assess the risk

Work out the level of risk of the hazards identified that are likely to cause an injury, illness or damage to health.

Step 3 - Fix the problem

Control the risk by fixing the problem using the ‘Hierarchy of Controls’:

1. Eliminate the hazard
2. Substitute the hazard
3. Isolate the hazard
4. Use engineering controls
5. Use administrative controls
6. Use personal protective equipment (PPE)

Step 4 - Evaluate the results

Work out whether or the not the changes have been effective by evaluating the results.  Set a date appropriate to the task and level of risk to re-evaluate.

A more detailed approach to Risk Management can be found by clicking on this link.