Workplace hazards bother people a lot and it is the right of people to address their concerns regarding their safety. It is the responsibility of the safety officer to ensure that the workplace is safe for everyone from different types of hazards. Some hazards are occupational while some are totally unexpected. It is very important to make your space safe from every type of risk. Therefore, there are some basic tips to follow for identifications of risks:
Keep yourself well-informed
People can only be protected from hazards when they are aware of different kinds of risks they may confront while working. The safety officer should visit the site to see possible hazards. Past records of occurrence of hazards, inspection of the site, analyzing the site and much more. When risks are identified after investigation and examination, then they are effectively managed and mitigated. For your company, you can download enterprise risk management software by WHS Monitor.
Conduct inspection of workplace
Sometimes, hazards do not appear in the start. They start appearing after some time. For example, some hazards appear only when specific types of tools are brought into operation. So, all those risks that might appear at the later stages can be identified at the early stage when a thorough inspection of the workplace is carried out. For this purpose, first of all create a list of possible hazards and then ask your team to look for them. Once all the risks have been identified, it would be very easy for you to come up with the corrective measures and all those steps that you can take to mitigate those risks very easily
Identify risks associated with the health
Most of the hazards are not visible to the naked eye. Due to this, it is very easy to identify them. For example, the hazard of nuclear elements being used on a site will not be visible as the harmful gamma radiations they emit cannot be seen with the naked eye. These radiations, however, have a very serious impact on the health which is not immediately visible.
The first step you should take is to categorize health-related risks into various types. This will make it easy for you to focus on each category separately.
Focus on the past incidents
In order to prevent many bad incidents from happening in the future, you need to focus on all those incidents that took place in the past. Look for all those factors that contributed to that happening. For instance, if there was a fire breakout in the past and it spread too quickly, you need to see what contributed to it. This will help you pinpoint a hazard that is on the way.
Keep taking feedback from your workers and their supervisors as they work on the site and they see what you cannot see. Create a form for gathering information and then ask your employers to fill them with the information they have.