No

No

No legal requirement - even the HSE example templates bear no signature panels

There's no legal requirement, but in every (staff injury) insurance claim I have dealt with over the last few years the insurer/loss adjuster has asked to see signed copies of risk assessments. If employees have not signed them then the claimant usually wins, from what I have seen and from conversations with the loss adjusters.

Bill, along with others my vote is NO.

But to follow up DH's comment, ultimately the test in Court will not be whether somebody has signed a piece of paper but whether those who need to understand what is said in some document called "Risk Assessment" or whatever have actually understood what is to be done.

The signature might keep the Compliance Officer happy but doing that is not much of a protection and certaintly doesn't give assurance as to compliance.

This is part of this weird world of claims. There is no legal requirement for a signature on a risk assessment, in fact there is no legal requirement for a document entitled “risk assessment” just that the findings are recorded and made  available to who ever needs to know. Similarly, if you look at HSE internal guidance it makes clear that nobody can be prosecuted simply for not having a “suitable and sufficient risk assessment”. Its only if something goes wrong and you can establish that lack of the risk assessment was a cause of that failure that the HSE get interested in the risk assessment. By contrast the lack of a risk assessment in civil claims cases is taken as prima facie evidence of liability. It's as if  the piece of paper will magically absolve you of your guilt and protect people from injury.

Of course, lawyers ( and the people who manage claims) are not H&S professionals. They have a checklist of things to look for and if it says no signed risk assessment they proceed with the claim. That  makes real H&S difficult, as people spend too much time chasing signatures and paperwork when they should be focussing on applying proper controls.     

Originally Posted by: IanSmith

No legal Req to sign attendance but does provide an evidence trail

All you have, at some future date, is a mark that was made on a piece of paper.

As far as I am concerned the risk assessment is carried out by people who know the work, I was once told by a HSE inspector to never do a risk assessment for electrical works.  I have no qualifications in that area.

If at all possible I get the Worker to do the risk assessment and if they need help I will assist.  I have a box at the bottom for them to sign to say, "I have read and understand this risk assessment".

Originally Posted by: matelot1965

is signed....and therefore evidence they have .....seen and understood

Not really, you have a mark on a page.

At best you could infer they have seen the document (although if they are only marking one box on one page it is impossible to categorically state they have seen the full contents of both documents).

Understood: perceive the intended meaning of (words, a language, or a speaker). Understood: interpret or view (something) in a particular way.

So unless the communication is explicit and a consensus between transmitting and receiving parties.

It's like saying that I have read and understood the T&Cs for all the online services I have used.

Have I read and understood them?  Of course not.

Have I ticked a box to say I did? Of course, because it was mandatory to do so.

Ever since the advent of the "accept" check box on the internet (copied its paperwork predecessor often failing to specify the version being referenced) I have only found one site where there is an additional button "Disagree & Continue".

Seem to vaguley recall a court case where the judge sided with a defendant in a contractual dispute that it would have been impossible for a normal ability person to have read, let alone given informed consent, in the time recorded to click a check box.

Hi Matelot

That might work up to an extent in the organisation you work for.

But it seems dependent on having some check QQ on EACH and EVERY risk assessment.....

....OR having the check QQ as part of a risk assessment course and then relying on the adequacy of the individual's assilimilation of that training to assume that they will routinely put the training into practice every time they are shown a risk assessment.

In the real world, life is rarely so simple.

Either you end up with a risk assessment that requires 40 different precautions for a task 

or you end up with several risk assessments each of which apply to the task, so you have a number of generic (or semi-generic) assessments AND the one that is ONLY specific to the task.

In practice this signature, initials or the cross put in by somebody with limited literacy is unlikely to bear much weight EVEN in the rare event that there is an incident which ends up in Court.

When it ends up in Court what will usually sway the balance is what was actually done, and what management could or should have done to turn what was said in any risk assessment into reality on the ground.

...and if it transpires that Worker A has not followed the 40 precautions to the letter, with the result that said Worker A OR Worker B is harmed, then the Court will consider first whether the risk assessment was indeed "suitable and sufficient" such that all 40 precautions did need to be followed to the letter AND/OR second why "adequate" supervision didn't ensure this happened.

I don't have much of a clue as to how many accidents (and other incidents) I have investigated in one capacity or another, but they include 40 fatalities and it has been very rare that I have been able to conclude that management (including supervision) has done all that it should have done to meet the legal benchmark, usually that of "reasonable practicability".

These include working as a defence expert witness in a number of HSE prosecutions and I would see a signature on a risk assessment as providing only marginally more defence as a chocolate fireguard.

All the signature does is to keep the Compliance Officers happy whilst at the same time influencing a false sense of security. Fine for helping get the ISO accreditations, otherwise, if anything, counterproductive - though good for the blame game in the internal investigation that isn't trying very hard to identify the underlying causes.

...and I've even worked for an organisation that makes great play of getting those signatures!

I hade the dubious honour of being a "fresh pair of eyes" across one of my employers businesses. In the office everything looked great - corporate documents duly signed by the names on the training matrix, countersigned by the supervisor. Then I stepped beyond the audit trail and went (without the supervisor) on to the shop floor where not one of the operatives that had signed the various Risk Assessments, Safe Working Practices at Tool Box Talks could speak a word of the writen English language the documents had been prepared in.

Extreme example maybe but explains why the NHS insist on independent interpreters rather than family members. Make signed documents a KPI and vested interests ensure signatures appear without meaning.