What is a Risk Assessment Checklist and why is it important?
A risk assessment checklist enables you to identify any hazards that may potentially arise and consequentially design and implement control measures to help prevent, reduce, or eliminate their occurrence.
Effective risk assessment and management is compulsory by law.
A thorough and successful risk assessment checklist will help you to:
- Create awareness of potential hazards and their risks among your employees.
- Demonstrate your commitment to meeting legal requirements and regulations.
- Prevent the occurrence of injuries and illnesses in the workplace.
- Avoid any unnecessary costs that could arise because of poor risk management within your business.
It is important to carry out risk assessments frequently and in particular:
- Before any new systems or processes are introduced.
- Before you make any changes to your existing systems or processes.
- When a hazard has occurred in your business.
How to create your own Risk Assessment Checklist.
When creating your own risk assessment checklist, you should determine the information about each potential hazard you will need to record to ensure that you can effectively prevent their occurrence or mitigate their risks.
You should include fields to detail which process this particular risk assessment checklist pertains to, who carried out the risk assessment and when to ensure traceability and accountability.
In our free example which you can download below, we have put these fields above the checklist so that they are clear to see.
Now you can move on to designing your risk assessment checklist.
We recommend using a table format to record your risk assessment as it is the best way to present a lot of complex data for references purposes in a clear and easy way to read.
The first column of your table should be designed to record each potential hazard your business faces during this process.
To ensure you identify every potential hazard we recommend analysing each distinct step of the process thoroughly.
Next you should include a column to outline who each hazard poses a distinct threat to.
This helps you to clearly determine whether a risk is internal, external or both.
A section to calculate the impact of each risk should then be included, within this section you will want to record the severity, likelihood, and overall rating of each hazard.
The severity and likelihood of each hazard should be graded on a scale of 1-3.
For severity, 1 is a minor risk, 2 a serious risk, and 3 a fatal risk.
For likelihood, 1 is unlikely, 2 is possible, and 3 is probable.
The sum of the severity and likelihood is then calculated to give the overall rating.
An overall rating of 1-2 suggests low risk, 3-4 suggests medium risk, 6 suggests high risk, and 9 suggests intolerable risk.
Next include a section where you can outline the control measures that you will implement to prevent, reduce, or eliminate each hazard.
This should then be followed by a section where you can re-calculate the impact of the risk with these control measures in place.
Again, you will want to record the severity and likelihood of the hazard with these measures and calculate their overall risk rating.
Lastly, a section where any additional comments can be made should be included.
Using Jomo247 to manage your hazards.
Your risk assessment records must be regularly kept up to date and thoroughly detailed to ensure that you can clearly evidence your compliance to both officially regulatory and legal bodies.
With Jomo247, once you have completed each risk assessment it is automatically stored within your system and can be quickly accessed whenever you may need.
With our seamless version control, all updates to your risk assessment checklist are stored and dated helping evidence your consistent commitment to improving your systems and processes.
Evidencing your compliance to your auditors has never been easier whether it is on-site or remotely.
With Jomo247 you can invite your auditors to your hub for no extra fee- we charge per action NOT per user.
And with our easy tagging feature you can quickly reference all your relevant risk assessment documentation and locate it stress free on that all important audit day.
For more of our free Compliance Templates, click here.
