Throughout my long career as an HSE professional, I have frequently been concerned about the mandatory RI&E required under Article 5 of the Working Conditions Act.
I’m mentioning the article right away for a reason—so you’ll know it’s about legislation.
The Occupational Safety and Health Act sets out the basic rules for safety and health in the workplace. The Occupational Safety and Health Decree explains how to comply with these rules and provides specific guidelines for doing so.
The RI&E is the Risk Inventory and Evaluation that allows you to assess—or have assessed—within your organization the extent to which you comply with these rules.
Are there any rules that you are not (fully) complying with? If so, you must draw up an action plan and, of course, implement it.
It is also important to involve your employees in this process, so that you can work together to determine the priorities and ensure that the initiative has the support of the organization as a whole.
The RI&E thus provides a very comprehensive overview of all mandatory safety requirements. This does not apply so much to environmental matters, which is a separate issue.
Comply with the law, or keep your employees happy?
Because the RI&E literally assesses whether you are in compliance with the law, the outcome of this assessment and the resulting action plan are not necessarily the same as what employees need.
Issues that are relevant to them may not even be addressed in the law. This makes it difficult to set the right priorities. As a business owner, you then ask yourself: What’s more important—complying with the law or keeping your employees happy?
So who ends up getting the short end of the stick? You know the answer.
The legislature assumes that this balance will naturally emerge when you involve your employees in the process. And while that may work sometimes, compliance with the law is often viewed as nothing more than a mandatory checklist.
And that’s a shame.
Since the RI&E covers all mandatory and relevant topics, it is actually an excellent opportunity to shape your safety policy.
Where are the biggest risks within your company?
What are you already doing well, and where could you improve?
And what do your own people think about that?
Because, as I said earlier, it all comes down to working together with the people who will ultimately be doing the work.
SecuDura’s Mission
For small(er) companies, it is often impossible to set up a full-fledged HSE organization. That requires a significant investment and does not generate any additional revenue for the company.
Using Benchmark Gensuite software, I make the RI&E more accessible to companies looking for a starting point for a safety policy, at a very reasonable price.
Within Benchmark Gensuite, I’ve created an environment where you can verify your compliance with laws and regulations, engage your employees, assess risks (or have your own staff do so), and immediately implement corrective actions.
It’s an all-in-one package that includes a well-designed incident reporting system right out of the box. Do you need to formalize an inspection, safety walkthrough, or risk assessment? It’s all included.
With this software package from SecuDura, the RI&E is no longer just a mandatory requirement, but a practical tool for establishing and maintaining your safety policy—created by and for your own employees.
