What the law says
- All companies with employees must complete a health and safety risk assessment (APV).
- A risk assessment needs to include an assessment of the company’s Health and Safety issues and how to solve them. It must include the following elements:
- identification and outline of the company’s Health and Safety conditions
- a description and assessment of the company’s Health and Safety issues
- prioritisation and completion of an action plan on how to solve the company’s Health and Safety issues
- guidelines for how to follow up on the action plan.
- The employer has to include the Health and Safety Organisation or the employees in the planning, organisation and completion of the risk assessment, and also in the follow up.
- The company has to consider whether any absence due to illness is due to Health and Safety conditions. There are no requirements for how the company includes the evaluation of absence due to illness in the assessment process.
- The employer has to make sure that the risk assessment is in writing and can be found in the shop or store.
- A risk assessment has to be completed at least every three years, or when changes are made to the actual work or work practices and processes, etc., that have an impact on the working environment. Workplace accidents and work-related illnesses should also result in another assessment.
Legal framework
- Bekendtgørelse nr. 1072 om lov om arbejdsmiljø: § 15 a., Stk. 2 og Stk. 3 (In Danish only)
Good to know
- Make sure you are clear about the overall framework for the completion of the risk assessment, e.g. who takes care of what, what method should be used and how and when you announce the risk assessment.
- Use the risk assessment as a tool to plan Health and Safety activities that fit into everyday work at the shop or store. For example, use the risk assessment to get an overview of what Health and Safety considerations need to be included in procedures, ranging from the delivery of goods to when the goods are in the shop or store, in procedures regarding renovation and also new inventory.
- Choose the methods and tools that are most suitable for you. Surveys are helpful if you have a lot of employees, but with fewer employees holding meetings could be more fitting.
- If you find any Health and Safety issues during your assessment, then prioritise them based on whether they break Health and Safety law, whether the issue is high-risk, how many people are exposed to these risks and which issues are most problematic.
- Make sure that any issues not solved immediately are part of an action plan.
- When choosing solutions, remember that the people who experienced the issues often have valuable knowledge about the causes as well as how to solve the problems.
- Be sure to follow up on whether the problem has been solved. Ask the people who experienced the problem in their day-to-day work.
- Consider the best ways to engage people in the risk assessment process, for example by informing them of the process, by using methods that engage employees, and by making sure that management and employees work together during the assessment process.
Read more about the topic
From Work Environment in Denmark (in Danish only)