What is risk management?
Risk management is all about identifying hazards, assessing the risks and taking steps to minimise their impact. In short, risk management is the process that will protect your employees from dangers in their workplace. Effective risk management will not only reduce or even remove the chance of an accident occurring but will also ensure that if something does go wrong, the damage to people, places and the environment is minimal.
Generally speaking, effective risk management comprises of six key steps. These are:
- Identifying risk – what hazards exist in your workplace?
- Assessing the level of risk – what dangers do they pose? What level of damage would be caused by not addressing them?
- Deciding on corrective action – what control measures will you put in place to minimise or reduce the severity of these hazards?
- Allocating resources – what amount of time, money or other resources do you need to take these actions
- Mitigating the risks – with appropriate resources in place, now you can put those changes into action
- Reviewing and reporting – once any corrective measures are in place, make sure to review how effective they have been and report and action any further changes that should be made to further reduce risk.
No matter how big or small your organisation is, and regardless of the sector you are in, you need to have a comprehensive risk management strategy in place. As part of your overall health and safety strategy, your risk management strategy may cover other kinds of risk that your business might encounter, such as financial or reputational risk too.
Why is risk management important?
Risk management is extremely important as it helps to reduce potential losses or threats in your business. Risk management is there to protect your employees, equipment, work environment and ultimately your profitability. Promoting a proactive approach to risk management can enable you to comply with regulations and save you time and money, not to mention protect your organisation’s reputation.
Just as no organisation is the same, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to managing risk in the workplace. Like many aspects of workplace safety, risk management is an ongoing process. Creating a risk management plan and storing it in a drawer somewhere, never to be used again, is not an effective solution. Good risk management will involve members of your teams at all levels. The policies and procedures you put in place should be reviewed and updated regularly. When things do go wrong, you should be able to react immediately to mitigate any further risk to ensure that incidents don’t escalate in the future – or are avoided altogether.
What are examples of effective risk management?
On a practical level, risk management will look different from organisation to organisation. Even teams within the same organisation may have different risks to consider as part of their day-to-day work. For example, let’s consider the risk management procedures that you might find in two workplaces, one in construction and one in healthcare.
The risks on a construction site are considerable so any risk assessments should consider everything from machinery to supplier timescales to the weather conditions. A good risk management response would include making use of safety checklists, using alternative suppliers and policies to implement in case of extreme wet or hot weather. This is on top of the more ‘obvious’ measures such as extensive staff training, the use of method statements (RAMS) and mandatory PPE requirements.
In a healthcare setting, you might expect similar strict adherence to PPE and continuous staff training. You would also expect to see specific patient safety protocols in place, to ensure that the right care is delivered at the right time. Healthcare employers may also consider how shift work impacts their staff wellbeing and ability to do their job, and the risks associated with long hours and stressful working conditions. For office-based staff, managing the risks involved with storing and sharing patient data is important, as well as protecting against external cybersecurity threats through regular training and software updates.
Of course, these two examples are not exhaustive. Every organisation will have to work to ensure that all risks are properly identified and managed. That said, one thing that all organisations should do is to involve all employees in the risk management process. Your employees are the people encountering these hazards every day and so are best placed to report on what they are and how they could be dealt with. Moreover, engaging your employees in health and safety practices leads to better hazard and near miss reporting, which in turn will provide more data to help you build a more accurate picture of your safety performance across your organisation. With this information, you can proactively head off the impact of future incidents and minimise risks before they cause real damage.
What are the benefits of risk management?
An effective risk management strategy can make your workplace safer, more efficient and can also improve your business reputation. But those aren’t the only benefits of implementing a proactive risk management strategy.
One of the long-term benefits of risk management is improving your company’s resilience over time. As you identify and assess your workplace risks, you can start to build up a clearer picture of safety in your organisation. With this data, you can start to spot trends and see where there are gaps and opportunities in your health and safety policies, processes and procedures. If these are then communicated well and the right follow-up actions are taken, your organisation will become better at mitigating risks and therefore more resilient to future threats.
Risk management can also help improve your decision-making and avoid costly mistakes. Think of your risk management strategy as an evaluation tool, informed by the experience you have gained through regular safety reporting, safety checks and by visualising and acting upon your safety data. Where you see patterns of behaviour or similar mistakes being made, you can quickly implement improvement initiatives before a more serious incident occurs. Acting proactively with the information you have, rather than reactively, means you are less likely to experience disruption and delays that can cost your organisation more than just money.
Finally, a risk management strategy can help you demonstrate compliance with industry standards and boost your reputation with clients, shareholders and employees. Demonstrating that you are complying with regulations is important to avoid penalties from regulatory boards such as the HSE. At the same time, it allows you to demonstrate to your team (and new recruits) that their safety, health and well-being is your organisations top priority.
How can Notify help you mitigate risk in the workplace?
Using a digital solution like Notify Technology’s health and safety software can help make mitigating risk in your workplace easier and more efficient. Notify has a number of tools that you and your team can use on the go to identify and report hazards, carry out risk assessments and take proactive action to improve safety in your workplace.
With Notify’s risk assessment software, you can create and complete tailored risk assessments that can be easily shared with your wider team and supply chain. You can add all of your hazards and control measures, and be assured that everyone in your teams has read and understood the risk assessment to support compliance.
Notify’s incident reporting software and free to use safety apps, enables your teams to report hazards, near-misses or accidents on the go, on or offline. With automated notifications enabled, you will be instantly altered to any high priority incidents, enabling you to take swift action to mitigate any further risk. All of this incident data is then stored in one central dashboard, which you can use to visualise and track levels of risk in different departments, sites or subsidiary companies across your organisation. Thanks to this overview, you can quickly identify patterns of behaviour, common hazards or near-misses and any other areas of concern. You can then use this data to proactively get ahead of the risks before they escalate.
Using digital software as part of your risk management strategy will save you precious time when it comes to audits and inspections too, ensuring consistency and accuracy across the board. As well as avoiding the need for paper-based audits, manual checklists and complex spreadsheets, Notify’s software allows anyone in your organisation to carry out inspections from anywhere. You can automatically assign audits to key members of staff and even schedule audits and reminders, ensuring that all audits, inspections and risk assessments are carried out regularly and on time.
Risk management is central to the ongoing success your organisations operations. Digital software can help streamline your processes, support compliance and make sure the right people are involved and engaged. To find out more about how Notify can enhance your approach to risk management, and help you continue to send your employees home safe every day, get in touch today.
