As an employer, providing a clean workspace can help you establish a contemporary and effective organisation.
By keeping work environments safe and clean, you can improve your business reputation, brand-name, and client perception. Cleanliness can also improve employees’ health and wellbeing and boost productivity.
Download our free cleaning risk assessment template to discover help you identify and reduce hazards for your cleaning staff.
What is a cleaning risk assessment?
A cleaning risk assessment is a report that outlines the hazards that cleaners and other employees meet at work. Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulation 1999 (MHSWR), employers have a duty of care to minimise health and safety risks.
Though a cleaning risk assessment, you can identify and reduce cleaning hazards from effecting all of your employees or third parties.
Cleaning activities can bring about several types of hazards. So, it falls on you to identify what could be a potential hazard and how to minimise the harm it could cause. Hazards can relate to:
- Chemical products: these hazards can have physical health effects on the cleaner and those around them. Like dermatitis (skin irritations), urticaria (allergic reactions), and even respiratory illnesses.
- Dangerous equipment: you find these hazards during cleaning sessions for dangerous equipment or machinery. For example, if a machine has sharp limbs, hard-to-reach sections, or requires specialist cleaning methods. This also includes electrical equipment that isn’t turned off properly at the time of cleaning.
- Manual handling: these hazards occur when a cleaner is required to move or carry objects to clean them. Cleaners may also need manual handling equipment to clean, like trollies, pulleys, weights, etc.
- Slips and trips: these hazards can range from not using proper safety signage for wet floors, to people tripping over exposed vacuum wires.
- Lone working: these hazards occur when a cleaner is working off-site or without supervision. It may prove difficult for them to attain immediate help and therefore suffer alone.
Why do I have to complete a cleaning risk assessment?
As an employer, you have a legal duty of care for all your workers, and that includes cleaners even if sub-contracted. They are classed as vulnerable and lone workers, which means taking additional care is essential.
Plus, cleaning staff come face-to-face with more substantial risks during their work activities compared to other workers. By carrying out risk assessment, you can provide them a secure working environment and improve employee wellbeing.
The benefits of a cleaning risk assessment
Whether you’re cleaning an office space or a factory floor, having a cleaning risk assessment can help you protect workers all round. For example, an office cleaning risk assessment can drastically improve:
- Employee focus and performance.
- Physical/mental health and wellbeing.
- Business productivity and profitability.
The consequences of not having a cleaning risk assessment
To keep legally compliant, employers must have health and safety risk assessments in place. You could face consequences to your business if your cleaning risk assessment doesn’t follow legal standards. Consequences like:
- Fines and compensation claims.
- Business disruption and closure.
- Loss of clients and reputation.
- Loss of current and potential staff.
- Imprisonment.
How do I carry out a cleaning risk assessment?
Employers can either complete the risk assessments themselves or designate a competent person to carry them out. They must have sufficient knowledge, training, and experience which allows them to manage risk assessments properly.
The template can include potential hazards, cleaning processes, and also additional information, instruction, and training for specific cleaning activities.
Health and Safety Executive (HSE) outline five steps needed to carry out a cleaning risk assessment:
1. Identify the hazards
When identifying potential hazards in the workplace or during cleaning activities, you should consider:
- The work activity itself and how the cleaning equipment is used.
- The cleaning substances used.
- Any safe/unsafe work practices.
- Overall state of the working environment.
It’s also advised to record past injuries and accidents, which can help minimise the risks from happening again.
2. Consider who could be affected and how
After assessing the hazards, you should establish which people could be directly affected by the risks, such as:
- All cleaning employees in your business.
- All other employees (including temporary and part-time employees).
- Public members who are visiting your workplace.
- Contractors, clients, and customers.
- Maintenance workers or delivery people.
3. Outline measures to control the risks
Once you’ve identified the risks and people affected, introduce the control measures. Evaluate each hazard and decide if you can remove it permanently or minimise it from recurring.
For example, to minimise the dermatological effects on your cleaners, provide them with protective gloves to wear when handling cleaning chemicals.
4. Report all your findings
Employment legislation requires employers to document risk assessments for businesses with over five people. But whatever the size of your business, it’s good practice to assess all workplace hazards and record your findings in the cleaning risk assessment form.
5. Review the risk assessment
You should regularly review your risk assessments annually and after relevant incidents. And also consider whether any changes in the workplace can affect it, like when:
- Introducing new cleaning products or equipment.
- Changing work hours (resulting in lone working).
- New starters requiring information and training.
COSHH
As well as complying with the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, the law also requires you to assess risks through the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) Regulations.
Under these regulations, you can further protect your employees from being exposed to hazardous chemicals and substances. You also directly benefit from having separate risk assessments. As it helps categorise all workplace hazards efficiently and manage the individual methods needed to control them.
Download our cleaning risk assessment template
Keeping legally compliant with cleaning health and safety legislation is crucial for employers, as you have a legal duty of care for every person on your premises.
Whether you need cleaning risk assessments examples or want a cleaning risk assessment form that fits your business - Peninsula can help.
Peninsula provides employment health and safety advice and can help your business track cleaning frequency, depth of cleaning, and time frames. Alongside risk assessments for cleaning, we also deliver health and safety training for cleaning activities – benefiting both you and your workers.
Peninsula clients also get access to 24/7 HR consultation for safe working requirements. And if you are not yet a client, you can still enjoy free advice from one of our business specialists. Simply call us on 0800 028 2420.
Disclaimer: This template is provided ‘as is’ and Peninsula Business Services Ltd excludes all representations, warranties, obligations and liabilities in relation to the template to the maximum extent permitted by law.
Peninsula Business Services Ltd is not liable for any errors or omissions in the template and shall not be liable for any loss, injury or damage of any kind caused by its use. Use of the template is entirely at the risk of the User and should you wish to do so then independent legal advice should be sought before use.
Use of the template will be deemed to constitute acceptance of the above terms.
