Health and Safety at work is a relatively new feature. It is not that long ago that very little if any consideration was made for the health of workers. In fact, many managers and supervisors struggle with the principles, especially when they conflict with the way they are used to do things. Often it is very hard to fight against the power of habit. However education in the risk and measures required to minimize it, is a vital factor, if we are to continue progressing.


The purpose of health and safety rules is to assess the risk of every dangerous activity in a job and allow for measures to reduce or remove a danger. This can be done, as we will see, in a variety of ways. In order of preference, a dangerous situation should be removed from a job description.

First of all, what is a hazard? It is a measure of the harm an event can occur. For instance a brick falling on your head from 20 meters is a serious hazard. Some risk assessment model assigns a numerical value of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 to measure the seriousness of the hazard. For example the core of a nuclear power plant becoming unstable and leaking to a nearby town would have a very high hazard rating, while breaking a tooth when chewing on hard candy would have a low rating.

The rest of this article will look at two of the most important elements of a good health and safety plan, an assessment or hazards and their risk.

A good risk assessment would take both of these factors into consideration when deciding the overall risk of a job or activity. For example, although the chances of the core of a nuclear plant are low, the hazard it represents is so high, measures must be taken to prevent it from happening and having the right equipment to manage it as well as possible if it does.

This introduces the concept of risk. This is a vital concept when assessing the health and safety of a company or activity. If a great hazard has a very low risk level it could be an acceptable risk. However, even a low level hazard that is highly likely must be taken care of to remove, manage or minimize its risk.

Risk assessments combine these two elements to make up an overall assessment. This assessment informs business owners and supervisors of the changes that need to be made to reduce the danger workers and the public are exposed to. Carrying out these exercises will make us all healthier and happier workers.

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