Risk assessment means taking a systematic approach to looking at what could cause harm to people. By assessing risk you know where potential problems and dangers lie, and can therefore take measures to prevent harm.
Organisations have a duty of care towards their volunteers. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 also place a duty on employers to assess risk to those who may be affected by their activities, which would include volunteers.
The Health and Safety Executive recommend a 5 step approach to risk assessment.
1. Look for the hazards
2. Decide who might be harmed, and how
3. For each hazard, evaluate the chance, big or small, of harm actually being done and decide whether existing precautions are adequate or more should be done.
4. Record the significant findings of your risk assessment, eg the main risks and the measures you have taken to deal with them.
5. Review your assessment from time to time, and revise if necessary.
Some health and safety jargon:
Hazard: something with the potential to cause injury or damage ie, something that could be dangerous
Risk: the probability of the hazard causing harm, combined with the degree of seriousness of the consequences. In other words, how likely, and how bad?
So the first step is to isolate an activity, and identify who and what would be involved. This means creating a list of hazards. It helps to involve people actually engaged in the activity. At this point dont think about how serious or trivial the hazard is, just list everything you think could potentially go wrong.
Then comes assessing the actual risk. It may help to break this down into how likely is it to happen and how serious could it be if it did, and then attribute points to each. You can then use the points to see how serious the risk associated with the hazard is.
For example:
You could have a point scale of 1 4, with 4 being very likely to happen, or very serious consequences depending on context.
Hazard: volunteers tightrope walking over crocodile pools falling in.
You score How likely 4 How serious 4
Multiplying them together you get a level of risk of 16
Hazard: Volunteers stroking kittens with feather dusters breaking their arms
How likely 1 How serious 1
Here the level of risk is 1.
If doing this as a group exercise it can help to use a grid (in the above case, 4x4) to help visualise the levels of risk for each hazard.
The point scoring system gives you a reasonable guide to priorities when taking measures to reduce risk.
Having done this it makes sense to set everything down in a table (see separate example). This might list each hazard, the points you have assigned them, the level of risk this suggests, and what steps you will take to reduce risk.
Please note that this is only one suggested method of risk assessment. Some people prefer not to use such a points system. It would be equally fine to simply list hazards, prioritise them and record the steps taken to lessen risk.
Taking measures
The entire risk assessment exercise is worthless if you do not take actions based upon it.
For each risk identify a measure or measures that will either eliminate the risk or reduce it to acceptable levels.
There are many ways of doing this. They largely boil down to three broad categories however:
- Inform provide adequate information or training to volunteers (or staff, or clients, depending on the situation).
- Change the way you do the activity to avoid the hazard or lower the risk (that is, take physical measures - use safety equipment, increase supervision etc),
- Stop the activity. If its too dangerous even with training and changing the way volunteers work then dont do it.
Say for example you have identified that volunteers lifting boxes have a high risk of injury. You could:
- Avoid the activity altogether.
- Change working practices make sure that two people lift one box instead of one.
- Give volunteers sufficient information to avoid the hazard guidance on lifting techniques
- Address the issue through training eg showing volunteers how to lift safely
- Better supervision make sure that someone is monitoring how lifting is carried out
- Ask volunteers if they have a history of back problems, or if they believe they are physically fit enough to carry out the lifting
In practice there is likely to be a combination of the latter 5 measures.
To reiterate the point made above, keep a record of the significant hazards, and what youve done to avoid. Remember point 4 of the HSE risk assessment guidelines.
Lastly, regularly review the risk assessment, and how the activity is being carried out on the ground! Circumstances change, people bend rules or get complacent.
Useful contacts:
Health and Safety Executive
HSE Infoline
Caerphilly Business Park
Caerphilly
CF83 3GG
Infoline: 08701 545500
hseinformationservices@natbrit.com
www.hse.gov.uk
Volunteering England
Information line: 0800 028 3304
www.volunteering.org.uk
