Health and safety risk management

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Health and safety risk management is a process where we do what we can to minimise the risks associated with health and safety hazards at our workplace. The aim is to ensure that no one is injured or hurt by a hazard at work.

Risk management is a systematic process that involves the following four steps:

identify the hazards
assess the risk*
control the risks
monitor and review the safety measures.

*The department's revised health, safety and wellbeing risk assessment template expands this step in the process to help the user consider, assess and document risks.

There are many instances when a risk assessment should be done. For example, whenever:

a new hazard has been introduced (e.g. commissioning new equipment item)
an incident (including a near miss) has occurred
when a new activity involving significant risk is planned.

The department has several specific procedures and risk assessment tools that detail how risk management is to be undertaken for specific activities involving risk. These include: undertaking high risk curriculum activities, going on school excursions, using hazardous chemicals and doing hazardous manual tasks. The risk assessment tools index guides staff through these procedures and tools and can be found on the Health, Safety and Wellbeing Management System (HSWMS) OnePortal page (departmental employees only) under the risk management element.

For more guidance on how to complete a risk assessment, refer to:

the managing health and safety risk guideline
the 'how to complete a health, safety and wellbeing risk assessment video' on the HSWMS OnePortal page (departmental employees only).