Risk assessment is the essential first step in the prevention of occupational accidents and ill health. OiRA — Online interactive Risk Assessment — makes this process easy.
It provides the resources and know-how required to enable micro and small organisations to assess their risks themselves. Available free on the web, OiRA tools are easily accessible and easy to use.
OiRA offers a step-by-step approach to the risk assessment process, beginning with the identification of workplace risks, then taking the user through the process of implementing preventive actions, and finally to monitoring and reporting risks.
What is OiRA?
OiRA was established in order to provide easy-to-use tools that will guide micro and small organisations through the risk assessment process. The OiRA software developed by EU-OSHA in 2009, and in use since 2010, is based on a Dutch risk assessment tool known as RI&E, which has proved to be very successful and well used.
EU-OSHA’s OiRA software helps sectoral social partners (employers' and employees' organisations) and National authorities (ministries, labour inspectorates, OSH institutes, etc.) to produce sector-specific risk assessment tools targeting small businesses.
Check out the OiRA project website for updated information about the OiRA project (OiRA partners, OiRA tools published or under publication).
What is the idea behind OiRA?
Risk assessment is the basis of any approach to safety and health management and is essential in the establishment of a healthy workplace.
Le cadre stratégique de l’Union européenne en matière de santé et de sécurité au travail pour la période 2014-2020, instauré en juin 2014, préconisait de «fournir un soutien financier et technique à la mise en place de l’outil OiRA et d’autres outils informatiques pour faciliter le respect de la législation, notamment dans les microentreprises et dans les petites entreprises...». En outre, la communication de la Commission pour moderniser la législation et la politique de l’Union européenne en matière de sécurité et de santé au travail (2017) souligne que l’OiRA est un outil utile et gratuit qui fournit des informations et des orientations sectorielles. Elle invite les États membres à pleinement intégrer l’utilisation d’outils d’évaluation des risques en ligne dans leurs systèmes juridiques.
By facilitating risk assessment, OiRA aims to increase the number of micro and small companies assessing their risks and the quality of their risk assessments. The tools enable companies to start (or improve) the risk assessment process. This way OiRA tools can help companies to become more competitive, for example by cutting costs that are the result of occupational illnesses and by minimising the risks of accidents, as well as to improve overall working conditions and organisational performance.
Why use OiRA?
Risk assessment is today a familiar process for many organisations, used in hundreds of thousands of workplaces across Europe in order to prevent risks. But, for some companies, particularly micro and small organisations, risk assessment can be a challenging process. OiRA can make this process easier, providing organisations with the resources they need to overcome such a challenge.
By using OiRA tools, organisations will also be taking advantage of certain aspects:
- The use of OiRA tools is totally free
- Tools are available online
- A mobile application is available
- Tools are targeted to the sector
- Tools are customisable to the companies’ conditions to a certain extent
- Tools give the possibility of developing an action plan and choosing from a list of proposed measures
How does OiRA work?
There are five key steps in the OiRA process:
- Preparation: to a certain degree OiRA allows companies to tailor the risk assessments to their own specificities by answering a few simple questions
- Identification: this involves looking for those things at work that have the potential to cause harm, and identifying who may be exposed to the hazard
- Evaluation: this phase consists of prioritising the risks that have been identified. The prioritization later helps to decide which measures should be implemented first
- Action plan: the tool will then help to generate an action plan and to decide how to eliminate or control risks
- Report: finally, a report and an action plan are automatically generated that can be printed and/or downloaded, allowing documentation of the results of the risk assessment process
How to access OiRA
Visit the available OiRA tools per sector and per country on the OiRA project website.
Involvement of social partners and national authorities
All OiRA tools have been created by or with the involvement of social partners and/or national authorities. If you are a social partner or a national institute/authority and you want to be involved and develop one or more sectoral OiRA tools, you can find more information on the OiRA project website.