Description
Course overview
This course is for employees appointed, or about to be appointed, to conduct or take part in workplace risk assessments: risk assessors, HIRA team members, supervisors who score tasks, and health and safety representatives.
It follows the Occupational Health and Safety Act’s general duties, and teaches the same hazard identification and risk assessment method used in the Safety Toolbox risk assessment document set, so what you learn here works directly with the forms your workplace already uses.
This course teaches the risk assessment method. It does not, on its own, make you a competent assessor of any particular workplace or hazard. Competence is demonstrated by doing a real assessment on your employer’s own system, and having your employer verify it on the sign-off sheet included with this course.
What you’ll learn
- The difference between a hazard and a risk, and the employer’s duty to find hazards and decide precautions.
- Where the risk assessor role fits: an employer designation in writing, not a statutory title.
- A systematic method for finding hazards, using nine hazard classes and four sources.
- The same likelihood scale, severity scale, and 5 by 5 risk matrix used across the Safety Toolbox risk assessment document set – so you can pick up those forms and use them straight away.
- The four risk bands, what each one requires, and who may accept the residual risk at each level.
- The hierarchy of control, and why personal protective equipment is always the last resort.
- How to score a risk twice: the inherent rating before controls, and the residual rating after them.
- How to record, brief, monitor, and review an assessment, including the eight review triggers.
- The five types of risk assessment, and how to choose the right one for a given situation.
Course duration
Approximately 2 hours of online learning.
Assessment & Certification
The course ends with a final assessment. Questions are drawn at random from the course question bank, so no two attempts are the same. You need 80% to pass, and you can reset the quiz and try again.
A certificate is issued automatically on successful completion.
An employer sign-off sheet is included with every enrolment. The employer uses it to record that the employee has demonstrated the course competencies in their own workplace, and to make the written designation of the employee as a risk assessor for a named area or scope of work. A certificate shows knowledge; the sign-off sheet is what turns that knowledge into a defensible workplace designation.
Why this course
The Occupational Health and Safety Act places a general duty on every employer to establish what hazards are attached to the work performed, decide the precautions to be taken, and provide the means to apply them. A risk assessment is how an employer discharges that duty in a way it can prove to an inspector or a court – and it is the document every other health and safety control in the workplace ultimately traces back to.
No statute names “risk assessor” as a title. The role rests on the employer’s general duty to have work performed under the supervision of a person trained to understand its hazards and with the authority to make sure precautions are carried out. This course is that training, delivered in a form an employer can evidence: an enrolment record, a dated certificate, and a signed workplace verification.
This course is competency/awareness training presented by Safety Toolbox – Safety Toolbox (Pty) Ltd, Reg 2026/639216/07.
