Individual Risk Assessments: 9 Things Employers Should Know
Almost every risk assessment an organisation holds is about an activity or a place. The archive room. Working at height. Lone visits. Display screen work.
There is a second kind, and it is much less well understood: an assessment about a person. Not the job they do, but the particular circumstances they are in, and what the organisation needs to change as a result.
Some of these are legally required and specifically named. Others are simply good practice that prevents most of the problems organisations encounter with health, disability and absence. All of them are easy to do badly, because they involve information people may not want to share.
Nine things.
1. What an individual risk assessment is, and is not
It is an assessment of the risks to a specific person, taking account of something about their circumstances that the general assessment does not.
It is not a medical assessment, and it does not require a diagnosis. The employer is not assessing somebody's health. It is assessing the work against what that person has told them, with occupational health advice where that is needed.
It is also not a separate legal regime. Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 already requires assessment of the risks to employees, and individual circumstances are part of that. Two provisions then name specific groups, covered below.
2. What triggers one
Six situations account for nearly all of them.
Pregnancy or recent childbirth, which is specifically provided for.
Young workers, also specifically provided for.
A disability or long-term health condition, where the work may put the person at a disadvantage or at risk.
Returning after illness or injury, particularly where duties may need adjusting for a period.
A change in circumstances the person has disclosed, from a temporary injury to a change in medication that affects driving or night work.
A role with specific demands, such as lone working, driving, client site attendance or shift work, where individual capability genuinely matters.
3. New and expectant mothers: a named duty
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The clearest statutory example.
Regulation 16 of the Management Regulations requires that, where work is of a kind that could involve risk to a new or expectant mother or her baby, the assessment must include that risk. Where the risk cannot be avoided by other means, the Regulations provide for altering working conditions or hours, offering suitable alternative work, or suspension from work on paid leave.
Two practical points. The duty is triggered by the general assessment identifying such work, and it becomes specific to the individual once she notifies the employer in writing. And the assessment should be revisited as a pregnancy progresses, because what is manageable at twelve weeks may not be at thirty-two.
Our guide to pregnancy risk assessment covers the sequence in detail.
4. Young workers: the other named duty
Regulation 19 requires employers to ensure that young persons are protected from risks to their health and safety which are a consequence of their lack of experience, absence of awareness of existing or potential risks, or the fact that they have not yet fully matured.
For offices this most often applies to interns, placement students and apprentices, and the practical answer is usually supervision, induction and clarity about what they should not do alone, rather than exclusion from work.
5. Disability: two duties running together
Where an individual assessment meets employment law.
Section 20 of the Equality Act 2010 requires reasonable steps where a provision, criterion or practice, or a physical feature, puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage.
The two duties are separate and overlap heavily in practice. A safety assessment asks what could harm this person; an adjustments process asks what would remove a disadvantage. The same conversation usually answers both, and the outcomes should be recorded in a way that survives a change of manager.
The most important overlap is evacuation. Somebody who can enter a building independently may still need assistance to leave it, which is a safety question that must be answered rather than avoided.
6. It is triggered by knowledge, not by a request
The point organisations most often get wrong.
An employer does not have to wait for a formal request. Where it knows, or could reasonably be expected to know, that somebody's circumstances create a risk or a disadvantage, the duty engages.
In practice that means a manager who has been told something informally has given the organisation knowledge. Training managers to pass that on, with the person's agreement, is more effective than any policy.
7. Doing it without being intrusive
The part that determines whether these work.
Four principles.
Ask about the work, not the diagnosis. The useful questions are what the person finds difficult, what helps, and what they want you to do. You rarely need to know the condition.
Let the person lead. They know more about their situation than anybody in the organisation.
Use occupational health for the questions you cannot answer. A referral is appropriate where you need to know whether somebody is fit for a specific task, not as a routine step.
Say what happens next. People withhold information when they fear an unpredictable consequence.
HSE publishes guidance on protecting vulnerable workers, and Acas covers reasonable adjustments.
8. Records, and who sees them
The handling question, and it matters more here than in an ordinary assessment.
Information about somebody's health is sensitive and should be held accordingly: accessible to those who need it to act, not circulated with the general assessment file.
The practical split that works is to record what was agreed where managers can see it, such as a changed workstation, a schedule adjustment or an evacuation arrangement, and to keep why it was agreed restricted.
That also solves the most common failure: arrangements agreed verbally with a sympathetic manager, which disappear when that manager moves and leave the person disclosing again to somebody new.
9. Review them, because circumstances change
Individual assessments date faster than any other kind.
A pregnancy progresses. A condition improves or worsens. A phased return ends. A temporary injury heals. A role changes, or the person moves office.
Agree a review point at the time, and make it the person's to trigger as well as yours.
The nine, in short
| Point | Position |
|---|---|
| What it is | Risk to a specific person, not a diagnosis |
| Triggers | Pregnancy, young workers, disability, return to work, disclosure, demanding roles |
| New and expectant mothers | Named in regulation 16, with a prescribed sequence |
| Young workers | Named in regulation 19; supervision and induction |
| Disability | Safety duty and adjustments duty run together |
| Knowledge | Triggered by what you know, not by a request |
| Method | Ask about the work, let the person lead |
| Records | What was agreed, visible; why, restricted |
| Review | Date faster than any other assessment |
Rows six and eight are where most problems start. One creates a duty nobody noticed; the other loses an arrangement that was working.
For international groups
Two considerations.
Several jurisdictions go further than Great Britain. Many covered in this series route individual circumstances through compulsory occupational health rather than through employer assessment, with health checks triggered by conditions a British employer would not expect. Estonia triggers checks for display screen work and sustained sitting. Lithuania requires them where the risk assessment shows a risk. Finland delivers the equivalent through compulsory occupational health care. Several also impose express duties to adapt work or transfer an employee whose health is affected.
Data handling rules differ too. Health information is sensitive everywhere, and what may be recorded, by whom and for how long varies. A group template that stores health details centrally may be lawful in one country and not another.
Holding assessments and agreed arrangements across every entity in one register, with sensitive detail handled appropriately, is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone, and periodic health and safety audits establish whether agreed arrangements are still in place.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite carries out individual assessments in a way that focuses on the work rather than the person's medical details, which is both more effective and easier for everybody involved. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years.
Our health and safety consultants work extensively with legal, finance and banking and IT and software organisations, and our DSE assessment work frequently forms part of an individual assessment where a workstation needs changing.
Where entities sit in several countries, our global health and safety consultants establish what each jurisdiction requires of occupational health involvement, and our international health and safety consultants keep that current.
If somebody in your organisation has an arrangement that exists only because their manager remembers it, a free gap analysis is the right place to start.
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Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
