How to Do a Risk Assessment A Practical Guide

A risk assessment is a straightforward process: you find workplace hazards, and then you put sensible controls in place to stop anyone from getting hurt. It’s not about generating tons of paperwork, but about taking direct, practical action to protect your team from injury or illness.

What Is a Risk Assessment and Why It Matters

A risk assessment is a key part of running any safe and responsible business, especially in high-stakes environments like construction or manufacturing. It’s a systematic way of looking at your work activities to figure out what could go wrong and then decide on the best ways to prevent it.

This process is more than a box-ticking exercise; it's a legal requirement in Australia and the foundation for preventing serious incidents.

The goal is simple: make sure everyone goes home safe at the end of the day. By spotting potential problems ahead of time, you can deal with them before they become accidents. For a deeper look into the specific definitions, you can learn more about what risk is in risk management in our detailed guide: https://safetyspace.co/what-is-risk-in-risk-management

To put it simply, a risk assessment breaks down into a few key stages.

The Core Components of a Risk Assessment

Each part flows into the next, creating a solid framework for making your workplace safer.

The Real-World Impact of Assessments

Think about a busy construction site. Hazards are everywhere-moving vehicles, work at height, heavy machinery. A proper risk assessment might identify that a specific corner has poor visibility for truck drivers, leading to the simple, effective fix of adding convex mirrors.

In a factory, it might reveal that a particular machine guard is frequently removed by operators to clear jams. This highlights a need for a better-designed guard that allows access without creating a new danger. These are the kinds of practical steps that come directly from the assessment process. For more on this, it's worth exploring resources on understanding industrial safety principles.

A risk assessment forces you to stop and think about the job properly. It’s the difference between assuming a task is safe and knowing it is, because you’ve actually checked.

A Legal and Moral Responsibility

Conducting risk assessments in Australian workplaces is also driven by some pretty sobering data. Safe Work Australia’s recent statistics showed there were 188 work-related fatalities, with vehicle incidents alone accounting for a staggering 42% of all deaths. Falls from height were the second biggest cause, responsible for 13% of fatalities.

These numbers aren't just statistics; they represent real people and show exactly why identifying and managing high-risk activities is non-negotiable.

Ultimately, a good assessment process protects your people and your business. It helps you comply with the law, avoid costly fines and disruptions, and most importantly, it shows a genuine commitment to your team’s wellbeing.

Getting Ready for Your Risk Assessment

Good preparation is the difference between a risk assessment that gathers dust on a shelf and one that actually makes the workplace safer. Spending a little time upfront to get organised makes the entire process smoother and more effective.

It’s how you make sure you don’t miss anything critical, and that your findings lead to real, practical changes on the floor.

Assemble Your Assessment Team

Before you even think about looking for hazards, you need to get the right people in the room. This is not a one-person job for the safety manager alone. The most valuable insights always come from the people who do the work every single day.

Your team should be a mix of perspectives to give you a complete picture of what's really happening. Don't just rely on management.

• Frontline Workers: These are your on-the-ground experts. They know the shortcuts people take, the frustrations with a piece of equipment, and the unofficial workarounds a manual never mentions. Their direct experience is gold for spotting hazards that aren't obvious from a distance.
• Supervisors and Team Leaders: They understand the workflow, production pressures, and how different tasks connect. They provide crucial context on why things are done a certain way and are key to putting any new controls in place.
• Safety Representatives: If you have Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs), they are a legal and practical must-have for your team. They’re trained to see the workplace through a safety lens and represent the concerns of their fellow workers.

Involving a diverse group from the start also means you get much better buy-in when it comes time to make changes. People are far more likely to support solutions they helped create.

Gather Your Essential Documents

Once your team is in place, it's time to do a little homework. Collecting the right information beforehand gives you the technical and historical context needed for a thorough assessment.

You'll want to get your hands on:

• Manufacturer’s Manuals: These are non-negotiable for machinery and equipment. They detail important operating procedures, built-in safety features, and maintenance schedules.
• Safety Data Sheets (SDS): For any chemicals on site, an SDS spells out the specific hazards, handling instructions, and first aid measures.
• Past Incident Reports: Reviewing previous accident and near-miss reports is one of the best ways to spot recurring problems. You’re looking for patterns.
• Relevant Legislation and Codes of Practice: Jump onto the Safe Work Australia website for any specific guidelines related to your industry or the tasks you’re assessing. This makes sure your process ticks all the legal boxes.

Having this info ready before you start your physical inspection saves a huge amount of time. It means you can walk into the work area armed with the knowledge of exactly what to look for.

Clearly Define Your Scope

Finally, you need to decide exactly what you are going to assess. If you’re too broad, the task becomes unmanageable. If you're too narrow, you might miss connected risks. The scope of your risk assessment needs to be sharp and focused.

So, are you looking at:

• A specific piece of equipment, like a new press brake in a manufacturing plant?
• A particular activity or process, such as welding operations in a designated workshop bay?
• An entire work area, like the receiving dock or a specific construction zone on a large site?

Defining your scope keeps the assessment on track. It provides clear boundaries for a focused, efficient, and ultimately more useful assessment that leads to real change.

Spotting the Real Hazards in Your Workplace

Alright, you’ve done the prep work. Now for the most important part of any risk assessment: finding the actual hazards. This is more than just a quick walk-around; it’s about learning to see your workplace with fresh, critical eyes.

Your mission is to spot anything, a situation, a piece of equipment, a substance, or even a process, that has the potential to cause harm.

Systematic Ways to Find Hazards

Just relying on memory or "having a look" is a sure way to miss something critical. To do this properly, you need a structured approach. This ensures you cover all your bases and find those less-obvious dangers that often get overlooked.

One of the best methods is a Job Safety Analysis (JSA), sometimes called a Job Hazard Analysis (JHA). It's a hands-on way to break a task down into its individual steps to see exactly where things can go wrong.

Let’s say you’re doing a JSA for changing a blade on a cutting machine in a manufacturing plant. It would look something like this:

1. Break down the job: List every single action, from powering down the machine and locking it out to safely disposing of the old blade.
2. Pinpoint hazards at each step: What could go wrong here? Is there stored energy in the machine? How sharp are the new blades? Is the lighting good enough to see what you're doing?
3. Find the right controls: What can be done to make each step safer? This could be a specific lockout-tagout procedure, mandating cut-resistant gloves, or adding task lighting.

By deconstructing the work like this, you move from guesswork to a clear view of the specific moments an injury could happen.

Looking for Different Kinds of Hazards

Hazards come in all shapes and sizes, and a thorough assessment needs to consider every type. On a construction site or in a factory, you'll encounter a real mix. Thinking in these categories helps organise your inspection and ensures you don’t just focus on the most obvious physical risks.

Physical Hazards

These are usually the easiest to spot. They're the things that can physically harm a person through direct contact or exposure to energy.

• Unguarded Machinery: Any moving parts like belts, gears, or blades that can catch clothing, tools, or limbs.
• Working at Height: This includes any work on scaffolding, ladders, or rooftops where a fall is a real possibility.
• Noise: High-decibel environments from machinery that can cause permanent hearing damage over time.
• Slips, Trips, and Falls: Everyday risks caused by wet floors, trailing cables, or uneven surfaces.

Chemical Hazards

These involve any solids, liquids, or gases that can cause illness or injury. Your Safety Data Sheets (SDS) are your best friend here.

• Cleaning Solvents: Often improperly stored or used without enough ventilation, leading to serious respiratory issues.
• Welding Fumes: Inhaling these fumes is linked to severe long-term health problems.
• Dusts: Wood or silica dust from cutting and grinding can cause incurable lung diseases if not properly controlled.

Ergonomic Hazards

These are the risks that come from a poor fit between the job and the person doing it. They cause strain and are often ignored until someone is already injured.

• Repetitive Tasks: Constant, identical movements, like those on an assembly line, that lead to strains and sprains.
• Awkward Postures: Bending, twisting, or reaching for long periods.
• Manual Handling: Lifting heavy, bulky, or awkwardly shaped objects incorrectly.

You can find more detailed examples in our comprehensive guide to common hazards in the workplace.

Don't Forget Psychological Hazards

The game has changed. A modern risk assessment isn't just about physical safety anymore. You absolutely have to consider psychological hazards that affect your team's mental health.

A workplace isn't truly safe if it damages a person's mental wellbeing. High stress, burnout, and fatigue directly impact focus and decision-making, increasing the chance of physical incidents.

In Australia, the focus on psychosocial safety has grown massively. Recent statistics from Safe Work Australia show that mental health conditions now account for 12% of all serious workers' compensation claims.

This means your risk assessment must actively look for factors like:

• High workloads and unrealistic deadlines creating excessive pressure.
• A lack of control or autonomy over how work gets done.
• Poor workplace relationships, including bullying or harassment.

Identifying these hazards, physical, chemical, ergonomic, and psychological, is the first, most important step in creating a genuinely safe work environment. Once you have your list, you're ready to figure out which ones pose the biggest threat.

Evaluating Risks and Setting Priorities

So you've got your list of hazards. Good start. Now comes the real work: figuring out which ones are genuine emergencies and which ones are just background noise. This is where you move from simply spotting problems to actually weighing up the danger they pose. It's a make-or-break step, ensuring you put your time, money, and effort where they’ll have the biggest impact.

You don’t need complicated software for this. One of the most practical tools in the safety professional’s kit is the humble risk matrix. It’s a simple, visual way to cut through the complexity.

The matrix helps you analyse each hazard by asking two blunt questions:

1. How likely is it that someone will get hurt?
2. And if they do, how bad will it be?

Combining these two factors gives you a clear risk rating. This simple process stops you from pouring resources into minor issues while a far more serious, less obvious risk gets overlooked.

Using a Simple Risk Matrix

A risk matrix works by plotting the likelihood of an incident against its potential severity. It gives you an instant, visual snapshot of your risk profile, allowing you to categorise hazards and decide what needs immediate attention.

Let's look at two familiar scenarios:

• Hazard A: A Trailing Electrical Cable. It’s lying across a busy walkway, so the likelihood of someone tripping is high. But the severity is probably low, a bruise, maybe a scrape. Nothing too serious.
• Hazard B: An Unprotected Edge on a Scaffold. Assuming your workers are trained, the likelihood of a fall is low. But if someone does fall, the severity is catastrophic. We're talking life-changing injuries or worse.

On a risk matrix, that scaffold hazard would light up like a Christmas tree. It’s a much higher priority, even though a trip over the cable is more likely to happen on any given day. This is how the matrix forces you to focus on what could cause the most harm.

Here's a basic 5x5 matrix to show you what I mean. It’s a great starting point for any business.

Simple 5x5 Risk Matrix Example

This visual tool helps you evaluate and prioritise risks by combining likelihood and severity.

As you can see, a rare but catastrophic event can easily rank as a higher priority than a common but minor one. This framework is all about making informed, practical decisions, not trying to predict the future.

A risk matrix isn't about having a crystal ball. It's a practical tool for making informed decisions. It forces you to think through the worst-case scenario and prioritise actions to prevent it.

The Hierarchy of Controls

Once your risks are prioritised, you need a plan. The gold standard for this is the Hierarchy of Controls. Think of it as a playbook for choosing the most effective and reliable safety measures.

The trick is to always start at the top and work your way down. The controls higher up the pyramid are far more effective because they tackle the hazard at its source.

1. Elimination: Can you get rid of the hazard completely? This is the best possible outcome. Instead of having workers clean windows on a multi-storey building, use a water-fed pole system from the safety of the ground. Hazard gone.
2. Substitution: Can you swap the hazard for something safer? A classic example is replacing a highly toxic cleaning chemical with a less hazardous alternative.
3. Engineering Controls: This is about physically separating people from the hazard. Think machine guarding, installing local exhaust ventilation to suck fumes out of the air, or building soundproof enclosures around noisy equipment.
4. Administrative Controls: Here, you change how people work. This means developing safe work procedures, delivering solid training, and putting up clear warning signs. For example, in a food business, following HACCP guidelines for commercial kitchen cleaning provides a structured administrative framework for managing critical contamination risks.
5. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE): This should always be your last resort. We’re talking about hard hats, gloves, safety glasses, and the like. PPE only protects the person wearing it and counts on them using it correctly every single time, which is why it’s the least reliable option.

This hierarchy is a core concept in any good risk assessment. It pushes you beyond simply handing out PPE and forces you to find smarter, more permanent solutions. In my experience, a solution from the top of the hierarchy is almost always a safer and more sustainable fix.

The infographic below shows the common categories hazards fall into.

This highlights that a proper evaluation has to look at everything, the machines people use, the substances they handle, and the physical strain of the job itself.

Taking Action and Keeping Score: Controls and Records

Let's be blunt: a risk assessment that just sits in a folder is completely useless. All that hard work identifying hazards and colouring in a risk matrix means nothing until you actually do something about it. This is where the rubber hits the road, turning your findings into real-world changes that keep people safe.

It's about having a clear plan, assigning responsibility, and keeping good records to prove you're on top of it. Without this follow-through, your risk assessment is just paperwork. It doesn't make a single person safer.

Nail Down a Clear Action Plan

Once you've landed on the right controls, you need a dead-simple plan to get them in place. Forget complex project management software. A solid action plan just needs to answer three questions for every control you intend to implement:

• What exactly needs to be done? Get specific. "Install fixed guard on the main lathe" is actionable. "Improve machine safety" is vague and will get ignored.
• Who is responsible for getting it done? Name a person. Not a department, a person. This creates ownership and stops tasks from vanishing into thin air.
• When is it due? Set a realistic deadline. This creates urgency and gives you a date to follow up on.

Your action plan is the bridge from identifying a risk to actually controlling it. I've seen it a hundred times: without specific names and dates, even the best intentions get swallowed up by the daily grind.

For a deeper look into picking the most effective fixes, check out our guide on the hierarchy of control measures.

A Real-World Example: Machine Guarding

Imagine your assessment flags an old lathe with an unguarded chuck, a serious entanglement risk. You've decided the best fix is a new, interlocked guard.

Here’s what a simple, effective action plan for that single hazard could look like:

See how clear that is? It’s a step-by-step process where everyone knows their role and deadline. This is how you get things done.

Why Your Documentation Actually Matters

Keeping records isn't just a box-ticking exercise for the safety inspector. It’s your proof that you’re actively managing safety. It shows you have a system for finding hazards and have taken reasonable steps to control the risks.

Good records are also a goldmine for future assessments. They give you a history of what you found, what you did, and whether it actually worked.

What to Include in Your Records

Your documentation doesn't need to be a 50-page epic. Simple and clear always wins. At a minimum, your risk assessment records should capture:

• What you assessed: The specific machine, task, or area.
• The hazards you found: A straightforward list of what could cause harm.
• Who might be harmed: Note the groups at risk (e.g., operators, maintenance crew, cleaners).
• Your action plan: The list of controls, with names and dates attached.
• The date of the assessment: Absolutely critical for scheduling reviews.

Using a platform like Safety Space can make this whole process ridiculously easy. You can build digital risk assessment forms, automatically assign actions to people with deadlines, and see their progress in real-time. It turns documentation from a chore into a powerful management tool, ensuring nothing ever slips through the cracks.

Your risk assessment isn't a "set and forget" document. Workplaces are dynamic, new people, new equipment, new processes, so your assessments have to keep up to stay effective. An outdated assessment can be almost as dangerous as having no assessment at all.

Think of it as a living document. It needs to be revisited regularly to make sure the controls you put in place are actually working and that no new hazards have slipped through the cracks. This ongoing review is a critical final step in getting your risk assessment process right.

When to Hit Refresh on Your Risk Assessment

While a yearly review is a good rule of thumb, certain events should trigger an immediate update. Don't just wait for the annual calendar reminder if something significant changes on site.

You should be pulling out your assessment for a review:

• After any incident or near miss. This is a massive red flag that a hazard wasn’t properly controlled.
• When new machinery or equipment is introduced. New gear brings new, often unforeseen, risks into the mix.
• If a work process or procedure changes. Even a small tweak in how a job gets done can create entirely new hazards.
• When new safety laws or standards are published. Your assessments must always line up with current legal requirements.

On top of these, changing environmental factors are becoming a major trigger we can no longer ignore. For instance, the National Climate Risk Assessment found that escalating extreme heat, floods, and bushfires will threaten Australian infrastructure and worker health by 2050.

This means your assessments, especially for construction or any outdoor work, must now start factoring in these climate projections. You can get more insights on these national climate risks over at csiro.au: https://www.csiro.au/en/research/environmental-impacts/climate-change/national-climate-risk-assessment

The goal of a review is simple: check if your existing controls are working as intended and identify if any new hazards have appeared since you last looked.

This regular check-up keeps your safety planning grounded in reality, protecting your team against both the old dangers and the new ones creeping in.

Your Risk Assessment Questions Answered

Even with a solid plan, a few questions always pop up when you're getting the hang of risk assessments. Let's dig into some of the most common ones we hear from people on the job.

Getting these fundamentals right is the key to making sure your assessments are consistent, practical, and actually make a difference on the workshop floor or construction site.

How Often Should I Do a Risk Assessment?

There’s no single, magic number for this one. A good rule of thumb is to formally review your risk assessments at least once a year. But, and this is the important part, you absolutely must review them immediately whenever there’s a significant change in the workplace.

Think of it as a living document, not a one-time task you can file away and forget.

Key triggers for an immediate review include:

• Bringing in new machinery or equipment.
• Changing a work process or procedure.
• After an incident or a near miss has occurred.
• When new information about a hazard comes to light.

Who Should Be Involved in the Process?

A risk assessment should never be a solo mission. The most effective assessments are always a team effort. You need a mix of perspectives to get a complete picture of the real risks involved in any task.

Your team should include:

• Managers and supervisors who know the workflow and production demands inside out.
• The workers who actually perform the tasks. Their input is priceless. They have firsthand knowledge of the shortcuts, challenges, and dangers a manual will never tell you about.
• A safety representative or an external expert if you're dealing with highly specialised risks like complex chemicals or machinery.

If you take one thing away from this, it's to involve the people doing the work. They’ll spot problems you might miss and come up with practical solutions that actually work on the ground.

A common mistake is trying to write a risk assessment from an office, completely disconnected from the reality of the job. You have to get out there and talk to the people on the tools; they are your most valuable resource.

What Is the Difference Between a Hazard and a Risk?

This one trips a lot of people up, but the distinction is simple and important.

A hazard is anything with the potential to cause harm. Think of an unguarded blade on a saw, a wet floor, or a bottle of corrosive chemical. It's the source of the danger.

A risk is the chance (high or low) that the hazard will actually cause harm, combined with how severe that harm could be.

Let's break it down with an example:

• Hazard: A wet floor.
• Risk: A high likelihood of someone slipping and suffering a minor injury like a bruise.

And another:

• Hazard: An unguarded saw blade.
• Risk: A lower likelihood of contact (assuming operators are trained), but the potential for a catastrophic injury is massive.

Nailing this difference is the key to properly evaluating which issues to tackle first.

Ready to take control of your safety processes? Safety Space replaces clunky spreadsheets and paper forms with a simple, all-in-one platform. Build custom forms, assign actions, and manage compliance effortlessly. Book your free demo and see how it works.