Hanne Troen

Demonstration of risk profiling for promoting safety in SMEs

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify and assess the risks and potential risks that may lead to accidents. It aims to look at how to improve risk assessment within SMEs for the benefit of all staff.Design/methodology/approach – The research included results from a Dutch project which identifies accident risks and safety barriers that are presented in a huge database and risk calculator. The method was first to develop a simple way of accessing this enormous amount of data, second, to develop a tool to observe risks and safety barriers in SMEs and to investigate the usefulness of the developed tools in real life, third, to collect data on risks and safety barriers in SMEs for two occupations by following 20 people for three days each and to create a risk profile for each occupations.Findings – The result is a simple way to go through all types of risks for accidents – a tool for risk observations for external safety experts, and useful for SMEs and for risk profiles for two occupations. Finall...