Risk assessment for the work Christmas lunch

[HelenInHeels]

The team are going for Christmas lunch next week (and going back to work afterwards). The health and safety manager has asked everyone to read and sign a risk assessment form. Covering things like: alcohol can impair judgement. There may be people fighting so be careful. Be aware of allergies.

I'm speechless.

And surely a risk assessment isn't something that gets distributed to employees. It exists so that the employer can take whatever actions it reveals to be necessary to reduce the risks identified.
If the risks relate to people's behaviour, then the mitigation might involve providing them with behavioural instruction, and I can see the point of getting employees to sign that. But not the risk assessment itself.

So on reflection I think my employer probably has done a risk assessment of our Christmas lunch. They just didn't need to tell me about it.

Employers now have a specific legal duty to have a Risk Assessment to prevent sexual harassment. It will be related to this I expect.

Risk assessments should be circulated to everyone they affect (or made available).
As others have said, this is because of the new EHRC guidance on sexual harassment which clearly states that an employer will be very unlikely to be deemed to have complied with the guidance if they do not have specific sexual harassment risk assessments in place. As a result things like this will happen more and more. It doesn’t matter whether employers “fire creepy men who sexually harass people” they still have to have the risk assessment in place.

@DirtyBlonde

We laugh but I had to put that into guidelines for a large exhibition we were attending, it was definitely needed by the rumours circulating afterwards! All but 2 attendees were under 30, 1 had got their first passport to attend, they went wild

Jeez.
Should have been at work in the 1980s! Although I do often ponder that was the reason for many rules.
What happens if you don't sign?

That is interesting, thank you.

Making people sign seems a bit OTT but an email reminding people of various policies and to behave appropriately is pretty standard now.

The sexual harassment guidance has increased attention on this area.

Exactly this.

I am all for risk assessments, but if employers are hiring creepy men who touch up women and they know about it enough to seat them away from females at lunches, they shouldn't need to fill a form in to know that this is unacceptable.

I wonder if a method statement of how they go about hiring and firing creepy men would ever start at 'don't hire men'. Or whether to mitigate this risk they just 'don't hire women'.

Not saying I agree or disagree, it’s the legislation that has been brought into force.

to not employ men or to exclude all men from an event would 9/10 be sex discrimination

employers can however put measures in place for colleagues to report sexual harassment, respond appropriately when a complaint is made, train managers on how to prevent and spot the signs of sexual harassment, train colleagues on what constitutes sexual harassment and have clear policies that are communicated to the workforce that states sexual harassment isn’t tolerated.

sincerely,
a tried HR person x

Back in the 70s I worked for a major insurance company who wouldn't allow us back in the office after an office Xmas lunch.

I have some sympathy with your employers.

As pp said it will be due to the new SH legislation.

Be fully assured they don't want to do these things but they have to because people (usually men) can't behave themselves.

I don’t disagree but you can’t fire someone who hasn’t done anything wrong other than make people feel a bit uncomfortable if he’s had one too many.

It caused outrage when we had a training course on it “woke society gone mad” blah, blah but you can’t help but think if people just behaved normally this wouldn’t be needed at all 😂

I've not been out for an 'official' work Christmas lunch where we've gone back to the office in recent times. Do people still drink alcohol? Are you allowed to at your work?

I remember the old days when it was a regular thing (almost compulsory!) that people would have a few drinks at lunch time and be worse for wear in the afternoon but that has changed at some point over the years and work do's have either been at a venue with no return to work afterwards, or in the evening.

I've just had second thoughts on the 'are people still allowed to drink alcohol on work events' question as someone's reply has reminded me that it's quite normal at my son's work - even on a normal working day and they are operating machinery. Just a completely different context to my own public service workplace.

Most places I’ve worked this would be against the code of conduct so yes, you can absolutely take this one through the disciplinary process

I reluctantly sit on our social events committee at work as I'm known as an admin whizz (I sort the guest list and supplier bookings or whatever), and for our christmas do every year the ops manager goes on about how we should sent out a behaviour expectations message, and every year the committee says 'yes that's a great idea' and every year my admin team laugh their heads off at it.

Interested thread.
Im surprised people have to go back to work after a Christmas lunch, though. That’s a bit mean spirited.

I’m guessing a secondary school? 😂

Its a duty of care and fear of legal action thing.
A Company Director was successfully sued (actually settled) after an employee had an accident while on company business. What actually happened was that his PA was popping out for lunch and he asked her to get someones leaving present and card while she was out. She was hit by a car while crossing the road.

5 point PPE!

I hope you were drunk when you wrote this 🤣

And no, nobody thinks practicing catholics are any better than anybody else.

Anything about the weight of your arse breaking the photocopier?

Last year some wag had put a sign up next to ours , " please wipe the glass afterwards ".

@Catapultaway it's not that I think we are any better. We certainly are not. It's just the ridiculousness of the perceived risk.