Risk Assessment Committee

Risk assessment principles provide the opportunity for us to transform workplace safety. These proactive, preventive approaches help organizations identify risks and enable action in advance of injury, illness or loss.

Moving Beyond Compliance

GettyImages-642501608 Traditional approaches to improving occupational safety and health (OSH) performance — focused primarily on injury rate reduction and/or regulatory compliance — are necessary components of OSH programs. But when used alone or in a vacuum, they force a rear-view mirror perspective that limits safety professionals from proactively reducing risk, advancing safety and driving a return on investment from safety programs.

Risk assessment is a formal process for identifying hazards, evaluating and analyzing risks associated with those hazards, then either eliminating the hazards or controlling those risks that can’t be eliminated to minimize injury and illness potential. It’s critical to proactively prioritize and mitigate risk in advance of injuries or catastrophes.

Our Risk Assessment Committee

Through our Risk Assessment Committee we aim to facilitate OSH risk assessment’s inclusion into the organizational risk process, allowing businesses to be proactive in prioritizing and mitigating risk in advance of injuries or catastrophes.

By understanding and implementing risk-based approaches to safety management, injury/illness prevention and employee well-being, OSH professionals help their organizations improve overall performance and position themselves as high-profile contributors who help organizations achieve their goals.

Our Goals

Through its work and initiatives, the Risk Assessment Committee pursues four distinct goals:

Educate executives, the business community and OSH professionals on the role of OSH professionals in the risk process, the value of the risk assessment approach and ways to successfully implement OSH risk assessment.
Improve risk-related training and education for OSH professionals so they can better understand the risk-based decision-making process and improve core risk assessment competencies.
Provide a platform for the OSH community to contribute to the development of new evidence-based risk-related policies, processes and solutions. We seek ways to leverage the expertise of the OSH community in identifying and quantifying risk, advance risk-related OSH regulatory and legislative initiatives related to the management of OSH risks and identify relevant research related to understanding OSH-related risks.
Provide a center of excellence for risk-related information and tools relevant to the OSH profession. This involves collecting and disseminating relevant risk-related research, collaborating with the insurance, accounting, and financial risk management industries to promote an exchange of ideas, accessing real-world practical experiences and applications, and facilitating outreach and collaboration with global nongovernmental organizations and academia.

Core Risk-Related Competencies

Many of the core competencies of risk management are defined and described in standards such as ANSI/ASSP Z10 and ANSI/ASSP/ISO 45001, both of which address OSH management systems, ANSI/ASSP Z690 (ISO 31000), Risk Management, ANSI/ASSP 590.3, Prevention Through Design.

To be effective risk managers, OSH professionals must understand:

The elements of and how to effectively implement and maintain a sustainable safety management system
Risk management terms, principles and guidelines and how to effectively implement them
Basic concepts of various common risk assessment techniques
The elements of and how to effectively conduct a design safety review and risk assessment for new designs/redesigns
How to incorporate enterprise risk management into the business planning and decision-making for corporate sustainability
How to evaluate/analyze risk assessments, establish acceptable risk, prioritize risks, and establish risk control metrics and dashboards.
Workplace hazards and risks and proper control means using hierarchy of control decision-making to reduce risks to acceptable levels

Processes for monitoring the effectiveness of risk control measures
How to identify predictive events or situations that may cause serious injuries or fatalities
Elements of an effective management of change process to mitigate risks
Risk factors during the construction phase of projects and necessary prevention controls to be incorporated to prevent construction work injuries or fatalities
How to incorporate safety and health requirements into procurement specifications
Requirements and process for selecting and managing contractors to mitigate risk
Methods and means to effectively communicate risk to stakeholders in all four stages of the operational setting: 1) pre-operational, 2) operational, 3) post incident and 4) post operation.

Risk in the Real World Video Series

View our Risk Assessment in the Real World video series, housed in the online ASSP Learning Library, that covers topics such as concepts of consultation, communicating with stakeholders, facilitating risk assessment, bowtie methodology and fatal and serious injury prevention.

View Risk Assessment Committee videos

Risk Assessment Education

ASSP is the preferred source for education among safety professionals, providing valuable training and education on a variety of safety topics, including risk assessment. In fact, you can become a risk assessment expert by earning a Risk Assessment Certificate, where you’ll learn to:

Implement the steps of the risk assessment process
Conduct a risk assessment leading to the identification and prioritization of your organization’s hazards and controls
Influence management to support risk reduction plans and efforts
Measure the effectiveness of the risk assessment process and outcomes to support you organization’s objectives

Earn a Risk Assessment Certificate

Consensus Standards

Risk assessment tools and methods are continuously evolving. Stay up to speed with help from ASSP, a leader in developing and evolving voluntary occupational safety and health standards that reflect recognized best practices both in the United States and internationally. Refer to our standards library for relevant information on how to implement best practices like OSH management and prevention through design.

Browse ASSP standards

Published Insights

Sharing knowledge is at the heart of everything we do at ASSP. The Risk Assessment Committee publishes insightful content to help you improve your risk assessment skills, whether you’re new to the profession or a seasoned professional.

Read Risk Assessment: Looking Back and Moving Forward (Risk Assessment Committee article)

Sample Risk Assessment Metrics and Matrixes