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Risk Assessment eLearning
Online risk assessment training that takes someone through the five steps properly: spotting hazards, deciding who could be harmed, choosing controls, recording it and keeping it alive.
Who it is for
Who this risk assessment course is for
Risk assessment is the foundation the rest of health and safety sits on, and it is usually written by someone whose job title has nothing to do with safety. This course gives them a method they can defend.
- Supervisors and line managers who write or review assessments
- Health and safety representatives
- Site managers, foremen and team leaders
- Small business owners doing it themselves
- Office managers and facilities staff
- Anyone asked to contribute to a workplace risk assessment
Course content
What the risk assessment course covers
Six short modules built around the five steps, with the emphasis on the two people skip: choosing proportionate controls, and reviewing the thing afterwards.
Hazard and risk
The difference between the two, and why confusing them produces useless assessments.
Identifying hazards
Walking the job, talking to the people who do it, and using your own incident history.
Who might be harmed
Employees, contractors, visitors, the public: and those needing particular consideration.
Evaluating and controlling
The hierarchy of control, and choosing measures proportionate to the risk.
Recording the findings
What has to be written down, how much detail is enough, and who should see it.
Review
When an assessment stops being valid, and what triggers a review.
Outcomes
What you will be able to do afterwards
- Tell a hazard from a risk and use both terms correctly
- Identify hazards systematically rather than by memory
- Decide who could be harmed, including people beyond your own team
- Apply the hierarchy of control instead of defaulting to PPE
- Record an assessment in a way that stands up to scrutiny
- Recognise when an assessment needs reviewing
Your legal duty
The law behind risk assessment
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require every employer to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of employees at work, and to anyone else affected by the work. Employers with five or more employees must record the significant findings.
Many individual regulations then require their own assessment on top of that general duty. COSHH for hazardous substances, manual handling, noise, vibration, DSE and fire among them. The method taught here is the one that underpins all of them.
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 - the general duty to assess
- Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 - sections 2 and 3
- Record the significant findings where you have five or more employees
- Subject-specific assessments are required by COSHH, manual handling, noise and others
Practicalities
How the course works
For employers
Training everyone who writes an assessment
Assessments written to different standards are hard to compare and harder to audit. Putting every supervisor through the same course fixes that cheaply.
- One invoice instead of a card payment per person
- Licences allocated as people move into supervisory roles
- Completion and expiry reporting for your health and safety file
- Renewal reminders before certificates lapse
- Bespoke versions built around your own assessment template
For people who own risk assessment as a significant part of their role, a NEBOSH qualification is the recognised step up from awareness training. See NEBOSH courses →
Risk Assessment eLearning: common questions
Yes. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require every employer to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to employees and to others affected by the work.
If you have five or more employees, you must record the significant findings. Below that it is not required, though most businesses do it anyway because it is the only way to show what was decided.
Proportionate to the risk. A low-risk office does not need the depth a chemical plant does. The course explains how to judge the right level rather than producing paperwork for its own sake.
Whenever there is reason to think they are no longer valid: a change of process, equipment, people, or after an incident. Many organisations also set a routine annual review.
It teaches the general method those all build on. The subject-specific assessments have their own courses and their own requirements.
About 30 minutes, with no time limit. The certificate is issued the moment you finish.
Yes. Open a business account and we invoice you for the licences, which you allocate as people need them, with completion reporting included.
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