All employers must conduct a Risk Assessment. Employers with five or more employees in order to comply with the law have to record the significant findings of their Risk Assessment.

Employers have a 'duty of care' to look after, as far as possible, the health and safety of employees while they are at work. They should start with a Risk Assessment to spot possible health and safety hazards.

A Risk Assessment is simply a careful examination of what in your work could cause harm to people, so that you can weigh up whether you have taken enough precautions or should do more to prevent harm. The law does not expect you to eliminate all risks, but you are required to protect people ‘so far as is reasonably practicable’.

The following steps should be considered when conducting a Risk Assessment:

1. Identify the hazards - first you need to work out how people could be harmed
2. Decide who might be harmed and how - identify groups of people who might be harmed and how they might be harmed
3. Evaluate the risks and decide on precautions - having spotted the hazards, you then need to decide what to do about them
4. Record your findings and implement them - if you employ five or more people, the law requires you to record your findings
5. Review your risk assessment and update if necessary - review what you are doing on an ongoing basis

This Risk Assessment Form template for businesses should be used by employers in order to comply with the law, it helps employers spot possible health and safety hazards.

This Form is in Microsoft Word format, written in plain English, easy to use and edit.