A risk Analysis Process is basically a problem solving process. It helps you identify the most likely health and safety threats to your business. During this exercise, you would use assessment tools to decide which risks you need to assess first. A Risk Analysis Process comprises of four steps, aIdentify the risk. This step is all about brainstorming!
Your health and safety team needs to make a list of all possible sources of risk to your business. You also need to take their experiences and knowledge into account; will they be able to identify all the potential risks?
Using the risk assessment toolkit, they would categorize the risks and decide which need attention first. This process will help them manage the risks with the highest likelihood of occurring and that would cause the most damage to your business.
Assess the risk
Traditional problem solving generally moves from problem identification to problem solution. But before trying to decide on the best way to manage the risk, your team must identify the root causes of each risk!
Your health and safety team must ask questions like:
What would cause this risk?
How will this risk impact the project?
The final two steps of the Risk Analysis Process
Develop responses to the risk
At this step your team should be ready to begin the process of assessing possible solutions to manage the risk or remove it.
Questions your team must ask here are:
What can be done to reduce the likelihood of this risk?
What can be done to manage the risk if it occurs?
Develop an emergency plan in case the risk occurs
Based on the risks your team could identify, they now need to develop action plans to reduce or eliminate the likelihood of the risk occurring.
What they decide on to manage the risk if it occurs needs to be put into a written emergency plan of action. If the risk occurs, they’ll be able to access this plan and reduce the need to crisis manage the risk!
