Risk Register Review and Acknowledgement Form

The introduction of the Health & Safety at Work Act (HSWA) 2015 meant a shift away from just monitoring and recording health and safety incidents to proactively identifying and managing risks, so everyone remains safe and healthy.

However, whilst it does not mandate that a PCBU must maintain a Risk Register, how else would a business easily Identify, Assess, Manage and Monitor their Risks?

 Your Risk Register is a LIVE document that is the very centre of your Risk Management process.

As a client of Safe Business Solutions (SBS), you are aware that in most cases SBS initially supported your business in drafting your first Risk Register.

We want you to get the most from your Risk Register, understanding that data is fed into your Risk Register from a number of different sources:

• Your workers
• Risk assessments
• Task analysis (JSA / JHA / SWMS)
• Incident reports and investigations

We are aware that some businesses do not actively use their Risk Registers effectively. We strongly recommend ‘breaking out’ the Risk Registers from your Health & Safety Management System (HSMS) folder and making them visable on the office wall or on the smoko table.

Another way to keep your Risk Register ‘ live’ is to review and discuss your risks at Toolbox meetings. Use the spreadsheet filter to select your higher risks, and then ‘review’ a couple of the risks with your workers at each Toolbox meeting. Ascertain ‘work imagined’ vs ‘work done’, does it match, are there any contradictions between what you believe is happening and what is actually happening?

A classic example of this is having a control in your Risk Register stating “Absolute zero tolerance to alcohol on company premises” but then having a fridge full of beer in the corner of the smoko room.

This is not suggesting you cannot have alcohol on site, but your Risk Register should reflect the controls in place to ensure workers are not consuming alcohol at work. It would therefore be better to state “Alcohol can be held on site if authorised by senior management, however workers are not to consume any alcohol without prior approval”.

For these reasons we have introduced a new simple form to enable clients to manage these reviews between SBS and themselves.

Further Information:

Please note, this information is not intended as legal advice and readers are strongly advised to consult an appropriate subject matter expert regarding queries about a particular employment situation. 

For more information on anything Health & Safety related, get in touch with a member of the SBS H&S Team. Freephone 0508 424 723 or www.safebusiness.co.nz.