LJames2010 We ask that everybody that uses a risks assessment sign it off. I know it is not a legal requirement but it does mean that we can be reasonably sure that they have seen the document and had an opportunity to ask questions about it. Although we have about 900 staff and we have hundreds of assessments we don’t expect everyone to sign every assessment only those that are relevant to their work- as we are basically a scientific organisation we can expect our staff to understand what they are signing. We are currently moving away from a paper based system to one using an electronic document management system and we will be using electronic signatures in the future. It depends on what you do. In some circumstances ( production lines maybe) it might not be appropriate to expect every to sign the risk assessment but you will need some confirmation that the staff know what they are doing and have appropriate training and been issued with the right kit. Horses for courses I suppose.

I'd be interested to know whether anyone who has been subject to scrutiny by an HSE officer has had cause to use an employee signed risk assessment which has served as some defence that they have been briefed and informed etc.

In a previous life, we used to file work area relevant risk assessments in the work area. The relevant manager was required to bring these to the attention of staff and the individuals then signed an over-arching declaration filed in the same place that they had the assessment brought to their attention and that they had understood them. This was supplemented with toolbox talks that regularly went through relevant risk assessments which required signed evidence of staff taking part in the talk. The work we were involved with sometimes required safe systems be prepared and these were filed alongside the assessment. The over-arching declaration included reference to these. Although never tested by an enforcement officer, as Max references, they did prove useful in defending liability claims occasionally.

A not uncommon issue of misinterpretation of L21 requirements. Duty is to communicate significant findings of risk assessment to relevant employees in comprehensible fashion, not to communicate the assessment itself. The way this is sensibly done is via information, instruction and training. Whilst Risk Assessments should be available on request, I suggest that there is no reason for employees to be shown them. Risk Assessment is a management tool, not a method of directly informing employees. I find it slighly worrying that some of your fellow students on a NEBOSH Diploma would think otherwise. I refer you to Regulation 10 of the Management Regs and ACoP paras 63-66. As for the burdensome, bureacratic and uncessary processes described elsewhere in this post by others..........

Hi All I am a supporter of communicating the output of the risk assessment as some others have mentioned. The RA itself is the mechanism to identify the hazards. The controls that are documented in the RA feed into the training or method statement or standard operating procedure or safe system of work - all ways to communicate. If evidence is required for defence or auditors then a documented training record indicating that they have received, understood and demonstrated they work to said MS, SOP, SSOW should suffice Not a fan of getting employees to sign risk assessments as in true master/servant relationship from the employer/employee I would not hold out much hope of a signed risk assessment providing me with a due diligence defence.

Seeing them and understanding are two separate issues, and in my humble opinion wouldn't suffice as evidence to support the employers duty (as already stated by Ron Hunter) Reg 10 (Mgt Regs)

Max How do you KNOW anybody understands anything you say? We once did an induction for a new group of workers who nodded their heads and said everything was ok and then when they returned to their office 45 minutes later one of them got injured at which point they ran around like headless chickens until someone from another office showed them the First Aid procedure which had been explained to them less than an hour before! The only way to be certain is to look at what they DO after they have seen the assessment done the training etc ie auditing and monitoring

How refreshing and how so very spot on. Safe place of work along with safe systems of work and an absence of reams of paperwork produced by people who quite frankly do not know what they are doing. It winds the clock back to the golden age of health and safety pre-1993 before the rot set in. SFAIRP was all that mattered then and it was all we needed. It is all we need now and the good HSE inspectors know it. The problem is that good inspectors are thin on the ground and many of today's inspectors as well as many safety practitioners have been brought up on reg 3 of MHSWR and cannot see much beyond it. In my opinion there is a simple test. Anyone, be they from the HSE or be they a safety manager or other practitioner, who goes into a workplace and asks to see the records of the risk assessments is not competent. Risk assessment is just one means of getting to the end result which is a safe workplace and safe working practices. There are other means and it is the result which matters, not how we got there. Concentrate on whether your workplace is a safe place to work, and push into the background the records of the significant findings and the collecting of autographs. A test of the Löfstedt review will be whether it dares point out how badly served we have been by regulation 3. I see reg 3 as being at the root of many of today's troubles in the world of health and safety. However it was absolutely fundamental to clinching an agreement on a harmonised health and safety system for the EU as it created common ground between our legal system with SFAIRP and the systems in the other member states. It was a legal fudge but it was a mistake and we have been paying the price ever since. However ditching it is probably nigh on impossible. One option could be for the HSE to review its guidance on risk assessment and scale right back the guidance on regulation 3 so as to send out a strong message that it is irrelevant to the h+s system in the UK. I dare them to do that. Will they rise to it? Unlikely. Instead we will have yet another review which just tinkers around the edges.

'A test of the Löfstedt review will be whether it dares point out how badly served we have been by regulation 3. I see reg 3 as being at the root of many of today's troubles in the world of health and safety.' al, I'm glad to see that someone has the good sense to highlight the problem with reg 3. When I commented the same on this forum a couple of years ago I was vilified by a number of posters - presumably fellow practitioners. I have also recently said elsewhere on these forums that formal risk assessments do little to enhance safety. The common response of those who know no better when asked a question - "do a risk assessment". Risk assessments have a limited used, but they are not the Philosopher's stone some obviously think they are. By way of an analogy it is a bit like saying "let's do what is reasonably practical", as if that helps solve the problem.

You only have to look at the HSE example risk assessments to see the answer. They do not have a sign off sheet attached to any of their risk assesments. However how otherwise can you prove the worker has read and understoon the ra. IMO risk assessments should be carried out by the worker, or by a more knowledgable person with the worker in attendance. I know some risk assessments are carried out back in the office with the worker at the sharp end never even seeing them.

And I have to almost entirely disagree.

By providing comprehensible and relevant (key words, as opposed to "showing") information, instruction and training - none of which is provided by R/A. I refer you to previous posts here (myself and others) regarding misinterpretation of Reg 10. You don't really expect me to wave a FRA in front of everyone in a 600+ occupancy building do you Chris? My worry is that NEBOSH might be actually teaching this. Sorry, Chris, looks like we differ here.

Transparency, available and discoverable - yes. Method of compliance with Reg10 MHSWR - no.

All this is very well but, I know of Civil Cases within my company that have been lost or should I say not fought by the insurance company because the risk assessment has not been signed. So now although I completely understand that its what's within the risk assessment that must communicated by actions and words such as IIT but I'm being pushed to get them signed by 100's staff as our insurance company are insisting upon it????? What I would call a No Win Situation Cres

Significant hazards gentlemen is the key. The RA is a tool to base your safe system around. Signing off a RA does not mean a thing. Show me what you did after you identified the signifcant hazards not a piece of paper with a signature.

Generally I prepare or review risk assessments with a department supervisor or a very experienced operator. For a new RA, or if the RA changes, then the dept manager also reviews it. There are then three signatures placed on a hard copy. The operators/staff in the department are then informed of the significant hazards and the controls through training and publication of either a method statement or an SOP, and often the SOPs are pictorial. Rather than have operators read and sign an often technical RA document, their signatures appear on their training records. That takes care of Reg 10 of MHSW. L21 para 64 says "The information provided should be pitched appropriately, given the level of training, knowledge and experience of the employee." JohnW

LJames- I believe you need to clarify with your tutors if they mean Risk assessment as in Reg 3 of MHSWR “formal record of significant risk(s)assessment(s)” or do they mean Reg 10 of MHSWR whereby you have converted the identified risks into a Safe System of Work (through consultation communication and all the good stuff discussed above). What should be happening is that each individual signs to acknowledge and accept personal responsibility for complying with the Safe System of Work as laid out by their employer for whatever task(s) they undertake- that will satisfy Reg 10 of MHSWR and provide the audit trail required by many insurers. It makes no difference as to the size of the organisation as everyone has a manager they report to who can facilitate this- until you get to the person who is in ultimate charge and responsible for everyone below anyway. In my experience this SSoW will inevitably include the full Reg 3 risk assessment somewhere within this document but it does not necessarily have to. The Reg 3 risk assessment must however be available within the company’s management system. On a light hearted tangent- I do get worried when fellow safety bods talk about employees not understanding the content of risk assessments (even in their Reg 3 format). What do you guy’s put in them that is so incomprehensible?

Ron, signatures, it's evidence that employees have reviewed the safe system of work, useful in court and also useful for BSC 5* and OHSAS.... Ant, content of risk assessments. Many are simple, some are not, depending on e.g. level of engineering requirement for interlocks, lifting operations etc. Engineers do criticise me if an RA is too simple. And, in my experience, operators are more responsive when reviewing MSs than RAs.

Hi All, I’ve got to say this is the first thread in years I have felt the need to voice my thoughts on- great stuff. I feel I should be more specific about the term “signature”. By this I mean some evidence specific to an individual that they can be identified by- alternatives I have come across include employee numbers- registration body numbers- CSCS card numbers- NI numbers- etc. For me a “signature” in whatever form is the widest understood acknowledgement within society that an individual is agreeing to an expected set of conditions and are accepting to be governed by them. Ron (much respect to you over the years so please take my comments in the manner they are intended). I’m not sure reading the whole thread where you stand on this topic…your comments on my post regarding signatures appears to contradict your opening post where you cite information/ instruction/ training as suitable ways to discharge your duty to inform employees of the significant findings of risk assessment. Would you not be taking signatures as a record of attendance? How else do you or anyone else know what IIT has been passed on and to whom? My feeling is that signing a contract of employment (potentially a once in a lifetime event if the company is a good one) does not adequately discharge an employers duty to inform of risks as it makes no account of changes/ developments in SSoW beyond the date of this signature. To explain my perspective- I work in the construction industry and EVERY organisation I have seen over the last 10 years operate “signature” driven SMS’s. By this I mean that competent persons draw up SSoW and sign to say they take overall management responsibility for it. Operatives then sign to acknowledge they understand the SSoW will operate within that SSoW. This is usually done as a group briefing exercise, and will be supplemented by tool box talk if things are going astray or if any section of the methodology changes. All construction company SMS’s in my experience further largely rely on “signatures” to evidence all manner of H&S legislative requirements- PUWER inspections, WAH inspections, LOLER inspections, acceptance of Lifting plans… basically everything that happens on site. The basic premise being that if it isn’t signed by a competent person it didn’t happen. This is what the HSE demand when it goes wrong- How else can it be evidenced? To All, I am genuinely intrigued as to how organisations can operate a functional SMS’s without asking the employees to sign (in the widest terms) to accept the conditions of the laid down SSoW as these are developed? Back to the subject of incomprehensible risk assessments for a moment if I can- If the assessments relate to a persons job role I think we in the safety profession do many trades a disservice by underestimating their capacity to comprehend their own job roles. To use John W’s example if a competent person, about to undertake a Complex LOLER lift, cannot understand a the risk assessment then they shouldn’t be doing the task. That said the reverse is also true and you have to wonder how some very educated people make it across the road on their own! No malice in any of my comments- just interested in others views.

Thanks for that Pete. Aye Ant, I think I'm becoming even more cynical as the years roll on (What? you could get more cynical Ron?). Default position is that a requirement for a signature ends up exactly the same as a "tick in the box". 'Why did you sign that?' 'Because I had to' (etc.) I grant you there are particular high-risk permissioning regimes where the signatory does actually count for something. As for training etc. I would take a register of attendance (not usually singatures, because many are unintelligible) not as a record of comprehension, rather to ensure that no-one in the workforce is missed out on important training or briefings. The only true way to measure comprehension and adherence to information, instruction and training is via testing, supervision and monitoring. To quote you back, Ant: "For me a “signature” in whatever form is the widest understood acknowledgement within society that an individual is agreeing to an expected set of conditions and are accepting to be governed by them." As I said above, in that context, every employee gives you a once-and-for-all when he accepts the contract of employment. Anything else is generally a duplication of that. And don't get me started on CSCS cards.........