COMPLIANCE & RISK ASSESSMENT RISKY BUSINESS
Owen Brown, Partner and Risk and Compliance legal expert at Keebles LLP, advises workplaces on the importance of risk assessments and new concerns employers are facing due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Whilst not all workplace health and safety regulations specifically require risk
assessments, numerous court decisions have suggested a general duty on employers to carry them out. Even where they are not required, either by regulation or by the common law, the carrying out of the documentation is good practice and a helpful exercise to reduce risks to health and safety.
Identifying risks, the chance of their eventuating, and their potential implications is an essential first step to reducing health and safety incidents.
There is little point in carrying out a risk assessment if the measures identified to reduce risk are not in. It is always helpful to revisit an assessment once the measures have been implemented to double check implications have been reduced and to record how and when the correct processes were implemented.
It is also important to be aware that risk assessments need to be updated regularly, or a new one should be carried out, if any new risks arise.
The coronavirus pandemic has introduced a serious new health concern affecting people and workplaces worldwide. In order to reduce the chance of people contracting COVID-19, or passing it onto someone else, the government introduced lockdown measures at the end of March 2020. A key plank of this has been to encourage people to work from home and to only travel into work if it is necessary for them to do so.
In the workplace employers should have carried out new risk assessments for both employees staying in the workplace, and for those working from home. Requiring employees to work from home would seem to involve an obvious reduction to the risk to their health and safety, particularly in the current situation. However, there are hazards associated with homeworking which may not have been considered before where employees had not regularly worked from home.
Risk assessments should therefore be carried out for home working employees’ which will in turn give the employer some control over their employees’ home environments.
The government has now introduced a phased easing of the lockdown restrictions, with the aim of employees returning to work if they are unable to work from home. Although we appear to be ‘past the peak’,
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the possibility of someone contracting COVID-19, whether an employee, or another person, remains possible. Risk assessments therefore need to be carried out before employees return to work.
On 11 May the government provided guidance to employers, employees and the self-employed which covers steps employers are likely to need to take to protect their employees, customers and others.
This guidance, and guidance from other relevant bodies such as the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), should be considered when risk assessments are carried out.
Consideration must also be given to the risks associated with employees travelling to and from work, particularly if public transport is used.
Failure to carry out proper risk assessments, and to implement any measures identified in them, could lead to employees, or their friends and families, contracting COVID-19 and civil claims and even criminal prosecutions may follow,
As life, hopefully, begins to return to normal, risk assessments will be at the heart of allowing employees and others to return safely to work.
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