Working Safely During The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic – Risk Assessment

As an employer, you must protect people from harm. This includes taking reasonable steps to protect your workers and others from coronavirus. This is called a COVID-19 risk assessment and it’ll help you manage risk and protect people.

You must:

1. Identify what work activity or situations might cause transmission of the virus.
2. Think about who could be at risk.
3. Decide how likely it is that someone could be exposed.
4. Act to remove the activity or situation, or if this isn’t possible, control the risk.

If you have fewer than five employees, you don’t have to write anything down, but it might help if you do. The Public Health England report 'Disparities in the risk and outcomes of COVID-19' shows that some groups of people may be at more risk of being infected and/or an adverse outcome if infected. You should consider this in your risk assessment.

There has evidently been produced guides to help you work safely (be COVID-secure) and manage the risk associated with running your business at this time. Including practical measures like:

1. Putting in place social distancing measures.
2. Staggering shifts
3. Providing additional handwashing facilities.

Any further additional help please view this guide from HSE, What to include in your Covid-19 risk assesment (PDF)

Health & Safety Executive (HSE)