Turn a WHS risk assessment and register into a live SharePoint form

What the form needs to capture

A workable risk assessment covers the same ground every time: the hazard, who or what is exposed, the likelihood and the consequence, the resulting risk level, the controls you will put in place, who owns them, and a review date. Keep those fields consistent and every assessment reads the same way, which is the whole point of a register.

The risk matrix, on the form

Forms 365 Web has a risk matrix component. The person picks a likelihood and a consequence, and the matrix shows the risk level that pair lands on, using the familiar grid your safety process already runs on.

An example five by five matrix. You set the scale and wording to match your own WHS framework.

From one assessment to a living register

Each completed assessment is saved as an item in a SharePoint list, so the list itself becomes the register. From there you get the usual SharePoint views and filters: open risks by area, high risks due for review, controls assigned to a person. A rule on the form can require the controls and an owner before a high risk can be submitted, so the important fields are never left blank on the assessments that matter most. Forms 365 Web also has a risk register component for presenting the register back on a form or page.

Building it

1. 1

   Set up the SharePoint list

   Create a list for the register with columns for the hazard, likelihood, consequence, risk level, controls, owner, and review date.

2. 2

   Build the assessment form

   Lay out the fields, add the risk matrix component, and connect the form to the list so submissions land as items.

3. 3

   Add the rules that matter

   Require controls and an owner when the risk level is high, using conditional rules, so critical fields are filled in.

4. 4

   Publish and share it

   Publish the form and share it with the people who do assessments, on the web or embedded in SharePoint.

Built for the safety and compliance job

Risk matrices and registers are part of the same toolkit that runs Certify, our ISO compliance product, which is built on Forms 365. The components are there to support your WHS process and record keeping. They do not, on their own, make an organisation compliant with any standard, so treat the form as the tool that captures the work, not as a certification.