Reducing accidents in the workplace should be one of the top Health and Safety priorities for employers. The best way to reduce accidents and lost time injuries is to improve hazard spotting and hazard identification across your organisation.
Hazards exist in all industries and workplaces, from manufacturing facilities to construction sites, so identifying and managing risks effectively is a must. That said, working environments and the risks they present can change from day to day, so keeping on top of your hazard identification is an ongoing and sometimes challenging task.
In this article, we’ll take a look at what effective hazard spotting is, how your employees can play their part in hazard identification and the ways that digital technology can help you identify and proactively manage/mitigate associated risks in your workplace.
What does hazard spotting mean?
Hazard spotting is the first and most important step in assessing and managing workplace risks. But what do we mean when we talk about a hazard? Put simply, a hazard is something that has the potential to cause harm. It could pose a danger to your employees, your clients or members of the public. Anyone who comes into your workplace could be at risk from unidentified hazards.
Most hazards fall into one of six categories: safety, physical, chemical, biological, psychological and ergonomic. While you might not expect to find examples of each of these in your workplace, it’s still important to understand what types of hazards there are to identify them correctly.
When we talk about hazard spotting, we mean the process of looking for and highlighting things in the workplace that could lead to injury, ill health, damage to property or equipment, or another kind of incident. As well as identifying these, effective hazard spotting involves thinking about how a hazard could cause damage, who might be affected and what steps can be taken to mitigate the risks posed. With effective hazard identification processes in place, you can spot potential risks and rectify them quickly before they cause an incident or accident. Hazard identification initiatives should form a vital aspect of your ongoing Health and Safety strategy.
Hazard spotting exercises – what are they?
When thinking about how you can best manage risk levels across your organisation, you should consider a few different methods to identify hazards. Each of these hazard-spotting exercises will ensure that all aspects of your workplace are covered, minimising your chances of missing a hazard and avoiding a serious escalation.
Carry out a workplace inspection
First off, we have the most straightforward way to identify hazards: carry out a workplace inspection. Walk around the areas that your teams work in, including both high- and low-traffic spaces, and report what hazards you can see. As well as material hazards, like heavy machinery or chemicals, make sure to look at how the work is being carried out. Are your teams able to work safely? Do they know what procedures to follow or are there any unsafe behaviours happening? Make sure to record these findings in a way which is easily accessible and visible to your team and the wider workforce.
Review your machinery, equipment and manuals via checklists
Another important hazard spotting exercise is to review your workplace equipment and the corresponding operating manuals. Does anything need to be repaired or replaced? Do the operating instructions correspond with how the equipment is being used? These manuals will usually highlight any particular risks involved with using the equipment too and can be helpful when updating or improving staff training.
Speak to your staff
Involving your teams in the hazard spotting process is crucial. You can choose how you collect your observations; a mobile safety app could work with staff who are already highly engaged, while other workplaces might benefit from in-person discussions about hazard identification. By consulting your staff, you will be able to reach a better understanding of the hazards that they encounter daily. You might find it useful to have similar conversations with your contractors or suppliers to create an even fuller Health and Safety picture. This in turn means you will be able to make more effective and more targeted improvements to working practices and ultimately keep everyone safe.
Review previous risk assessments and incident records
Using lessons learned from previous incidents such as near misses, or from accidents, is another useful tool to support your hazard-spotting. How did the changes made then improve things today? What other adjustments could be made to further improve workplace safety? Have the changes led to other hazards being created? Looking at previous safety records is also a good way to identify patterns of behaviour and manage hazards that might otherwise be missed.
What should your workforce do if they identify a hazard in the workplace?
You’ve carried out your workplace inspection, consulted your team members, reviewed your incident reports and identified some hazards that need to be managed. What are the next steps that your workforce should take?
Firstly, any hazard that is identified should be reported. This could be as part of a wider risk assessment, or an observation by an individual staff member. This information should then be shared with supervisors and the Health and Safety team.
When a hazard is reported, your team should then assess the level of risk it poses. From that, you can decide if corrective actions are needed to control or minimise the risk to as low as reasonably practicable. Other questions you should ask yourself are: Are there already processes in place to mitigate the risk posed? Do these need to be reviewed? Has this hazard been reported before? Are there any patterns in the type of hazard being reported from this particular site or area?
Once any updates have been made, you now need to record your findings and the actions taken. You should make sure that you use a centralised system, like comprehensive risk assessment software, that enables others to access and share that information quickly. When you make the process of identifying and reporting hazards easier for your teams, they are more likely to play an active role in hazard spotting to help proactively get ahead of risks.
How can you effectively manage hazards and get ahead of the risks?
Building a proactive safety culture with effective hazard identification and management is an ongoing activity. Using the right digital tools for your organisation can help simplify this process, enabling every employee to play their part in keeping your workplace safe.
With Notify Technology’s incident reporting software, your teams can report hazards from anywhere, on any device. With our native mobile app, employees can log their findings on their phone, tablet or web browser, along with photos and their GPS location. Managers and Health and Safety Teams can get instant notifications, assign corrective actions and monitor their progress in real time.
By making it easy to report hazards in less than 60 seconds, our incident reporting software and mobile apps will engage your workforce to help improve your hazard identification process and speed up the time it takes to put new measures in place, helping you proactively get ahead of risks – not to mention removing the need for messy spreadsheets and paper forms!
You can also view the data collected in Notify’s Safety Intelligence dashboards. You can easily drill down into the type of hazard being reported and the location – helping you identify patterns and trends to rectify potential safety concerns quickly and with confidence.
You might not be able to fully eliminate hazards, but taking proactive steps to control the level of risk will help reduce accidents and make your workplace safer and more proactive. Notify Technology’s digital safety solutions are here to make that process quicker and easier than ever before. Get in touch today for more information or try out our tools for free today!
