ABSTRACT
The concept of risk is a pivotal one in safety and is one of the cornerstones to our understanding of why safety problems occur. The concept uses the ideas of hazard, danger and of potential harm to workers or to the general integrity of the work system. One of the problems in using the concept, however, is that the conceptualization of risk is often limited and is often difficult to see all of its facets. Risk as a concept is extremely broad and involves hazards from every conceivable aspect of the work situation including:
the hazards from the physical work environment, for example the equipment and machinery, the level of noise or temperature, exposure to harmful chemicals and the layout of the workplace;
the hazards due to the behaviour of people at the workplace;
the hazards due to the way the work is organized, including the work flow and pace, the hours that are worked and the communication flow within the workplace; and
the hazards due to the whole system of work, mostly resulting from the interaction of each of any of the above aspects, for example hazards emanating from the way the work is organized to take account of particular physical hazards or from the need for workers to change their behaviour in work environments or situations that are hazardous.
