A template is a memory aid. It stops you forgetting the columns and it makes one assessment comparable with another, and that is the whole of its value. The thinking it cannot do for you is the evaluation: deciding whether what you already do reduces this risk enough, and if not, what else. Businesses that buy a pack of templates and fill them in have bought the columns and skipped the judgement.
The columns a general risk assessment form needs
What are the hazards. Who might be harmed and how. What are you already doing about it. What further action is necessary. Who will carry that action out. By when. And done, with a date. HSE's own example uses exactly those, and the last three are the ones generic templates leave off, which is why so many completed assessments contain no actions anybody owns.
Risk assessment example: what an example risk assessment actually shows
Take an office. The hazard is not office. It is trailing cables at the printer, a fire exit blocked by deliveries, boxes stored above head height in the stationery cupboard, and staff working at unadjustable desks. Each has a different person exposed, a different existing control and a different further action. A completed example is useful precisely because it demonstrates that specificity, and a template cannot.
Free risk assessment template or software: format is free, content is not
Nothing in the regulations prescribes a form. Paper, spreadsheet or software is your choice. What must be there is the significant findings, and for an employer with five or more employees they must be recorded. Recording more than the significant findings is how assessments become fifty pages nobody reads, which is its own kind of failure.
Scoring matrices, and their limits
Multiplying likelihood by severity gives a number that looks objective and is not: two people scoring the same hazard routinely differ by a factor of four. A matrix is useful for ranking your own actions in priority order and is misleading when used to compare across sites or to justify doing nothing. If you use one, publish the definitions of each score so the numbers can at least be argued with.
Checklists, and where they help
A checklist is good for inspection and bad for assessment. Walking a site against a list of the things that are usually wrong catches conditions efficiently. Assessing a task means asking what could happen here that is not on anyone's list, and a checklist actively discourages that question by implying the list is complete.
A basic risk assessment template and a simple risk assessment template: what both leave to you
The columns are the same in every version worth using: activity, hazard, who is at risk, existing controls, a risk rating, further action needed, the owner and the date. The difference between a basic and a simple pack is usually only how many example rows it ships with, and those rows are the danger rather than the value. Keep the grid, delete every example, then walk the area and write what is actually there. The two fields most often left blank are the ones an inspector reads first: who wrote this, and when will it be looked at again.
Questions people ask about risk assessment template
Is there an official risk assessment template?
HSE publishes an example template and worked examples rather than a mandatory form. Any format is acceptable provided the significant findings are recorded.
What should a risk assessment form include?
The hazards, who might be harmed and how, the controls already in place, the further action needed, who will do it, by when, and confirmation it was done.
Do I have to write my risk assessment down?
An employer with five or more employees must record the significant findings, under regulation 3(6) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.
Are risk assessment scoring matrices required?
No. They are a common convention for prioritising actions. The regulations require a suitable and sufficient assessment, not a numerical score.
Is a point of work risk assessment template different from the main one?
Yes, and it is the one people actually use. The main assessment is written before the job by somebody with time; a point of work assessment is a short card completed by the person doing the task, at the place, immediately before starting, and it asks what has changed since the plan: the weather, the access, who else is working here, whether the equipment we assumed is the equipment we have. It should fit on one side, have room for what was found and what was done about it, and be signed by the person who looked. A long template defeats it.
Is a download risk assessment template safe to use as it comes?
The grid is safe and the content is not. Every downloaded pack ships example rows so the buyer can see how it works, and those rows are the hazard: a completed form describing somebody else's workshop is worse than a blank one, because it looks like a judgement nobody made. Delete every example, keep the columns, walk the area, and write the date and the name of the person who walked it. If the pack has a scoring matrix, read how it is defined before using the numbers, since two packs can score the same hazard differently and a rating with no defined scale means nothing.