Risk assessment - general operations

If part or all of your business is office based, you can fulfil many of your risk assessment obligations with a single document. Use our risk assessment - general operations to get started.

Why you should use this assessment

Health and safety in low-risk environments should be a simple exercise. So it’s sensible to cut down on the paperwork as much as possible. Fortunately, you can cover many of your risk assessment duties with a single general document. You can also cross refer to other specific assessments where these are required, such as your fire risk assessment. This saves on repetition and also turns your assessment into a ready reference for all of your risk management information.

Using the document

Our Risk Assessment - General Operations covers the hazards which you’ll come across in average office premises. Of course, you should still check that it has everything in it that you need. If there are facilities or equipment on your premises which are less common, they won’t be covered and you’ll need to add these. Examples of less usual features and equipment which you might include are ponds, sprinklers and window cleaning cradles but, of course, there are endless possibilities.

There are six columns, headed as follows: “Activity”; “Person at risk”; “Significant hazards”; “Risk (before control measures)”; “Risk control measures”; “Residual risk”. We’ve included suggested text in each row, but you should systematically work through the document, filling in the blanks and amending the example statements accordingly.

“Risk” is expressed as the likelihood of the hazard causing harm, multiplied by the severity of the harm. There’s a scale of one to five for each element, which is explained at the end of document. We’ve filled in the numbers in the columns based on an average workplace. Make sure you check and amend these accordingly.