COVID-19 Risk Assessment

As an employer, you have a statutory duty to provide a safe place of work and a duty of care towards anyone who may be accessing or using your place of business. During the pandemic, one of the most important steps you can do in order to achieve this is to carry out a COVID-19 risk assessment.

The main COVID-19-related hazard is the risk of infection. Through a risk assessment you should be able to manage this by:

• Identifying what activities might cause transmission of the virus
• Identifying who might be at risk and the likelihood of that happening
• Putting measures in place to control the risk

We can work with you to ensure your risk assessment is comprehensive and sufficient. This an be as part of a general workplace risk assessment or a discrete COVID-19 risk assessment.

Our assessors are trained, qualified and experienced. Since 2002, we have provided honest and straightforward guidance for businesses to help with all aspects of their health and safety. We have thousands of happy clients, read some testimonials here.

During the assessment, the assessor will record any hazards noted and, if necessary, provide a list of  recommended controls. We will work with you to establish a timetable of actions based on priority.

Some of the areas you will need to consider in order to  become COVID secure are:

• Consulting with staff and/or their representatives and handling concerns about the virus
• Giving guidance and training to staff
• Implementing social distancing measures in your premises. Where this isn’t possible, we can give practical guidance on alternative solutions
• Cleaning and hand hygiene controls
• Protecting vulnerable workers
• Procedures to take if someone falls ill
• Dealing with a local outbreak
• Changing existing policies to accommodate social distancing guidelines
• People working from home
• Ensuring you involve and communicate with workers whose protected characteristics might expose them to a different degree of risk
• Monitoring procedure and disciplinary procedures
• Mental health issues
• Use of PPE
• Working hours and staggering shifts
• Visitors to your premises
• Changes to your emergency procedures

The results of your assessment must be shared with your workforce. The government recommends all companies publish the risk assessment on their website . In fact, if you have more than 50 employees, you are required by law to do so.

You should also display a notice telling people that you have properly assessed the risks and then taken  necessary steps to mitigate those risks. For a downloadable notice from the government which you can display, follow this link Staying COVID-19 Secure.