Risk identification, assessment, and management
Effective risk management has been shown to reduce the likelihood and severity of serious, adverse health and safety outcomes.
Board members need to understand what is happening in the kura or school to identify, assess, and manage risks.
Many boards delegate this process to the principal or a health and safety committee that reports to the board.
Keep reading to learn more.
What are your board’s responsibilities?
Boards (as PCBUs) must undertake due diligence to manage risk and ensure, so far as it is reasonably practicable, that the school is a healthy and safe environment for all staff and students.
What is a PCBU?
A PCBU is a “person conducting a business or undertaking,” usually a legal or corporate entity.
In the case of a kura or school, the board is the PCBU, and the board members are officers of the PCBU.
As board members (and officers of the PBCU), you have considerable influence over ensuring that everything reasonably practicable is done to keep everyone healthy and safe.
The role of the PCBU is a crucial role defined by the law.
Managing work health and safety risks involves the following four steps:
Identifying hazards: Finding out what situations and things could cause death, injury, or illness, including poor mental health or wellbeing outcomes.
Assessing risks: Understanding the nature of the risk that could be caused by the hazard, the severity of the consequences, and the likelihood of it happening.
Controlling risks: Implementing the most effective control measures that are reasonably practicable to remove, isolate, or minimise the potential risk.
Reviewing control measures: Ensuring control measures are working as planned.
What is hazard identification?
Boards must identify reasonably foreseeable hazards that could give rise to health and safety risks in the workplace/school environment.
Identifying hazards arising from work activities involves finding things and situations that could potentially cause harm to people.
What is a risk assessment?
To create a healthy and safe environment, sound systems and processes must be in place for hazard and risk management.
Boards should focus on the significant risks rather than using their resources to manage every risk and respond appropriately to the level of the risk.
What is the difference between a hazard and a risk?
The key differences are:
A hazard is a situation or thing with the potential to cause death, injury, or illness.
Risk is the likelihood of death, injury, or illness when exposed to a hazard.
Eliminating a hazard will also eliminate any risks associated with that hazard.
A hazard arising from a work activity can be defined as a situation or thing that can potentially cause death, injury, or illness to a person.
The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 states that hazards also include a person’s behaviour where that behaviour has the potential to cause death, injury, or illness to a person (whether that behaviour results from physical or mental fatigue, drugs, alcohol, traumatic shock, or another temporary condition that affects a person’s behaviour).
Hazards at work may include hazardous substances, vehicles, plants, equipment, falling objects, repetitive movements, fatigue, bullying, violence, falls, slips, and trips.
Risks must be managed by taking action to eliminate hazards and minimising them if that is not reasonably practicable.
Questions your board could ask
- Have we delegated risk identification, assessment, and management to the principal or a health and safety committee?
- Do we regularly receive a report on this process?
- What processes are in place to identify hazards?
- Do we have a risk assessment process that focuses on significant risks?
Templates, resources, and references
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