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First time business owners: assessing your premises

Becoming a first-time business owner is a very exciting venture to embark upon. However, there are a lot of details that you need to iron out, particularly when you’re assessing your premises for risks and hazards.

The law requires you, as the business owner, to make sure a thorough risk and hazard assessment is performed at your premises. Every business is different, however, and there are different procedures to be taken – there is no such thing as a ‘generic’ risk assessment.

This article goes over some of the things you may have to consider when assessing your premises.

Identify the hazards

The first step is to identify all possible hazards, both short and long-term. This is a crucial step to take at the outset. The last thing you want, for instance, is an employee filing an Asbestosis Compensation Claim against you a few years down the line, because you didn’t have your premises cleaned of Asbestos dust.

You can perform preliminary hazard identification simply by walking around the premises yourself, with some of your employees, so you can hear their opinions. You may want to contact your trade association, if you’re a part of one, to find out what services they can provide. If your company will be utilising heavy machinery, talk to the manufacturers about chemicals the machines may use and what the potential hazards are.

Identify those who may be harmed

The next step would be to outline who in your company may be harmed during the operation of your business. This ranges from people working in your warehouse, to employees in the office, to customers or couriers.

Risk evaluation

It’s best to compare your business to good practice when you’re evaluating risks. It’s always best to have a standard to compare yourself to. If you can’t get rid of a hazard completely, it’s best to do everything you can to minimise risk as much as you can.

Next, you should try to organise all work operations in a way that exposure to hazards will be minimised. Then, make a list of necessary protective equipment, clothing and gear that your company will have to invest in.

Making records of all safety procedures and assessments

Take care to make documented records of all risk assessments and evaluations undertaken by your company. This way, if an accident does occur, you will be able to demonstrate that you took steps to try and avoid these kind of incidents.

Keeping records will also enable you to monitor changes and improvements as your business grows.

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