How To Conduct A Risk Assessment and Develop Safe Work Instructions

One of the things that our staff takes great pride in is our ability to take the mystery out of Health & Safety Compliance in Ontario.  It can be difficult for a business to decipher what the legislation says and what it means!  We are here to help you better understand what safety and compliance may look like for your business. Industrial Safety Trainers offers a wide range of consulting services to meet the needs of your business.

 JHSC Coaching and Mentoring

Just because members have received training on their duties as JHSC members, doesn’t mean they know what they are doing when they get back to the workplace. Sometimes trying to figure out if your safety inspections are being done right or if your safety meetings are effective can be difficult. Sometimes, those involved in H&S need someone to walk them through the process.  They may need to go through the motions to ask questions or see how certain elements are done. This is a service that we do quite often. Usually, we will attend a workplace one or two days a month. During those days, we will with the JHSC conduct a comprehensive workplace inspection, conduct a risk assessment on a high-risk task and develop a safe work procedure. We would also facilitate a health & safety meeting. We would record the minutes and show them how to communicate the results of the meeting to others.

We can also:

• Create workplace-specific inspections checklists
• Develop the JHSC terms of reference and schedule for meetings and inspections
• Walk the JHSC members through the process of conducting safety risk assessments and the process of developing safe work instructions, including training to workers
• Assist in developing safety policies and procedures that contribute to the company’s Managed Health & Safety Program.

We would generally start with the above, and in the following months, we would task the JHSC to do some of the above as well. Then we would review with them how they made out and any recommendations we may have.  These visits may go from monthly to every other month to maybe once or twice a year as time goes on.

Our clients see significant value in having one of our safety experts assist in coaching and mentoring their JHSC and supervisors.

Conducting Risk Assessment and Development of Safe Work Instructions

Trying to keep workers safe starts off with understanding what it is that can hurt them and others. Once you truly understand the hazard, you can then develop controls that will protect the workers. Those controls, in a lot of cases, would simply be the development of risk assessments and safe work instructions that describe the hazards, how to work safely with them, and what can be done to eliminate the risk.

Some businesses simply do not have the time to do these risk assessments and write safe work instructions. However, they know not doing it is costly; this is where one of our expert safety consultants can do the assessments on their behalf.

The benefit of bringing in a safety expert to do risk assessments and developing safe work instructions may include:

• Our consultants are experts at what they do. They have the experience and knowledge you need.
• Because we do this kind of thing all the time, we are quick at it. In addition, we may have done something similar with another client, so the process would not take as long.
• We have knowledge of hazards that your staff may not have, which makes it challenging to develop controls for identified hazards.
• In most cases, we will identify other areas that may need attention when conducting the risk assessments. For example, when writing a procedure to un-jam a machine, we may need to write a procedure for locking out the equipment.
• You have peace of mind knowing that someone with expert knowledge and experience has done the work.
• Every procedure is provided in a word document so that it can be modified as needed.
• We can train your workers on the safe work instructions that have been developed.