Risk Assessment For Safeguarding Your Business

As a business owner, ensuring your employees’ safety is of the utmost importance. Healthy employees beget a healthy company culture, which keeps your business running smoothly. Not to mention, you also have a legal responsibility to keep your team safe on the job.

To evaluate workplace safety, you can start by conducting a business risk assessment.

What is a Risk Assessment?

Before you can proactively protect your workers, you need to understand the risks they face at your workplace. A risk assessment can help you identify safety hazards and their potential consequences.

Every industry has specific risk mitigation requirements. For example, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 sets requirements around basic safety protocols and calls for risk assessments in specific industries as part of its audit process.

That said, risk assessments go above and beyond legal compliance. They also help:

Reduce hazards at your workplace
Calculate the cost of each hazard in the short-term and long-term
Utilize data from past incidents to predict future incidents
Allocate responsibility for each hazard to the appropriate parties

Learn more: Risk Assessments: Definition, Purpose, and Process

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Three Types of Risk Assessments

You can employ three types of business risk assessments, depending on your goals. These risk assessments include:

#1 Regulatory Compliance Assessment

As we mentioned earlier, some risk assessments are required by law. It’s important to stay up to date on required risk assessments for your industry. Otherwise, you could face expensive fines, reputational damage, or forced business closure.

OSHA regulates these workplace risk assessments and requires all companies to implement basic safety protocols to prevent work-related injuries and illnesses. Some industries must meet additional requirements — the construction, maritime, and agricultural sectors are just a few examples.

You can reference OSHA's hazard identification assessment materials if you’re unclear on your legal responsibilities as a business owner. These materials can help you execute a satisfactory regulatory risk assessment and stay in compliance.

🎧 Listen to the Entrepre(doers) Podcast: Making Job Sites Safer with Behavioral Safety Awareness

#2 General Risk Assessment

A general risk assessment isn’t performed for regulatory purposes. Instead, it simply lets you review your company’s internal hazards. If you have a dedicated safety manager, they can lead this assessment. If not, you can hire a third-party risk professional to conduct it for you.

During a general risk assessment, you can review your workplace environment to see if it has any of OSHA’s unacceptable hazards, risks, or exposures. You can also set additional standards tailored to your operations.

On average, general risk assessments take around six months to complete. This gives your risk assessment team enough time to observe your operations thoroughly and collect sufficient data.

#3 Comprehensive Risk Assessment

As its name suggests, a comprehensive risk assessment provides a more rigorous evaluation of your company. It often includes a cost analysis of all the risks identified in your various departments.

Since this type of risk assessment is so involved, it can be rather time-consuming and expensive. Luckily, not all companies need to use this type of assessment. Comprehensive risk assessments are typically reserved for businesses with uniquely complex or noteworthy hazards.

Dive Deeper Into the Different Types of Risk Assessments

What is an X-Mod?

Experience modifiers (X-Mods) summarize a company’s workers’ compensation insurance claims history. They’re used by insurance providers to estimate a business’ risk and set its insurance premiums. By optimizing your X-Mod, you can set yourself up to enjoy lower insurance expenses and a better bottom line.

X-Mods are calculated by dividing your business’ actual losses (claims) by the expected losses for an average business in your industry. All companies start out with an X-Mod of 1.00. Incurring workers’ compensation claims can cause your X-Mod to increase, leading to costlier insurance premiums. The amount your premiums change will depend on the frequency and severity of your claims.

Since just one workers’ compensation claim can increase your insurance costs, you want to do everything in your power to avoid them. You can start by identifying the root cause of previous claims using the risk assessments discussed above. After that, you can seek out support to solve any ongoing safety issues.

Learn more: Understanding X-Mods: How to Take Control of Your Premium

What Are Safety Meetings?

Safety meetings are another tool you have at your disposal to ensure high safety standards at your company. They give you a chance to discuss pertinent safety concerns, protocols, and procedures with your workers.

Safety meetings should take place:

Regularly

According to OSHA, all organizations are required to conduct safety meetings on a monthly or quarterly basis, regardless of their size. Scheduling these meetings on the same day each week or month can help your workers learn to expect them.

Before New Projects

It’s a good idea to host safety meetings before you embark on new projects. This way, you can train your workers on how to avoid potential hazards so they’re less likely to get injured when the project begins.

After Safety Incidents

In the aftermath of an accident, your workers may have some questions or concerns. A safety meeting allows them to share those with you. It also lets you explain how you intend to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.

Why Are Safety Meetings Important?

Facilitating Discussions With Your Boots-On-The-Ground Workers

Safety meetings let you hear from workers who have first-hand experience navigating your company’s job sites. These workers may be aware of risks and hazards that your safety managers have yet to identify.

Protecting Your Financial Well-Being

Regular safety meetings keep safety at the top of everyone’s minds. In turn, your workers may be less likely to cut corners on the job, resulting in fewer accidents. Proactively avoiding accidents can protect your business financially.

Boost Employee Morale

Workplace accidents can have a ripple effect on your entire company. They can decrease its profitability, productivity, and employee morale. By hosting regular safety meetings, you can show your employees that you care about their safety and keep morale high.

Topics to Cover in Your Next Safety Meeting ASAP

Four Steps for a Successful Safety Meeting

If you want to enjoy the benefits of safety meetings, you need to conduct them properly. Here are four steps for hosting an effective safety meeting:

1. Prepare Adequately Beforehand

Many workers tune out meetings they deem irrelevant. You can engage your employees by planning your meeting’s agenda ahead of time. Make sure each agenda item is truly relevant to the attendees and leave enough time for questions at the end.

2. Select the Right Meeting Time

The time, date, and length of your safety meeting can also influence its success. It’s important to schedule these meetings at a time when all of your attendees will be available and alert.

3. Be Clear and Concise

It’s a good idea to practice what you want to say before the meeting. Doing so can help you communicate your message clearly and concisely. Outlines and meeting agendas can also help you stay on track as you speak to your team.

4. Request Feedback

Make sure you ask your attendees to share their thoughts, questions, and concerns during the meeting. You can use their feedback to improve future meetings and maximize the use of everyone’s time.

Read the blog: 4 Steps for Structuring a Successful Safety Meeting [Free Templates]

Create An Incident Response Plan

While avoiding accidents is ideal, the next best thing is to have a detailed incident response plan in place in case one occurs. Incident response plans can help you contain the damage of a workplace incident by responding to it swiftly.

Here are the most important details to include in your incident response plan:

Who is responsible for each step of the response
Who should be notified about the incident
How to classify the severity of incidents
Which procedures should be used to analyze and investigate incidents
How to contain incidents to reduce their damage
How to fortify your safety measures going forward
When to provide additional training and hazard awareness

Not Sure Where to Start? We've Got You Covered.

5 Steps You Should Take After an Accident

Even if you take every precaution, workplace accidents may still happen from time to time. When they do, it’s easy to panic and lose sight of the bigger picture. Even so, it’s important to follow these five steps after an accident:

Make sure all of your workers and customers are safe
Document the details of the accident
Carry out an internal investigation
Make any necessary changes or repairs
Host training sessions to prevent similar accidents from happening again

Read on: What To Do After a Workplace Accident

Modified Duty: Getting Back to Work After an Injury

Modified duty programs can help your company recover from workplace accidents faster. These programs help employees come back to work as soon as possible by modifying their job responsibilities. For example, you can let an injured employee work a shorter shift or skip physically-taxing tasks until they’re fully recovered.

To find out how to implement an effective modified duty program, download our Modified Duty Resource Pack.

Employees in PPE meeting in front of a white board

Risk Mitigation For Safeguarding Your Business

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