By when and how strictly must a risk assessment be followed?

[VegemiteSandwich]

Hi, having a few issues with work at the moment :(

Occ health say that the employer is legally obliged to uphold it immediately.
My manager and (apparently) HR say that it is a working document and can therefore be changed. Apparently without any discussion with me!

The more long winded version is: there is an activity that I used to do five times on Tuesday morning. We discussed in my risk assessment that I was finding it difficult and causing pain, but we agreed that I would do it instead two times, twice a week (four times total). I was happy with this. It's nothing particularly dangerous but does tend to give people in my industry (patient orientated) bad backs.

Anyway, this was four weeks ago. This week I was meant to do this activity seven times. And four times tomorrow. So, an increase rather than a decrease.

I've kicked up a fuss and they are going to refer me to occ health for an assessment. I can't see the point myself - if we've agreed to management strategies in my risk assessment, what else needs to be done but follow it???

I've booked in to see my GP in the hope that they will write a letter stating that I cannot do this activity more than x number of times a week.

Any hints or tips? Really getting so stressed about work at the moment, and rather than working up to the last minute as I had planned I am instead counting up my annual leave hours and thinkng about leaving at about 28 weeks instead (20 weeks now).

Write your own. Seriously. You are just as responsible for your own H&S and you clearly can't rely on them to do it for you, as they've shown. Perhaps go over it with your GP and get them to sign it off too?

Well, I mostly did write my own. The manager said that he was pleased with the suggestions that I had made. I filled in the form, he signed it.

I fear that, when it comes time to review it, he will reduce the measures made to make life easier - now he realises I'll kick up a fuss if he doesn't follow it.

Good for you. Sounds like you know what you are doing, stick to your guns.

Well no, I don't really know what I'm doing :( My manager is on holiday and I spoke today to my manager's manager about how I didn't feel that me ignoring the risk assessment recommendations and doing something tomorrow . . . feel that I've been railroaded into it anyway.

If the GP writes recommendations, are these something that the employer might follow more strictly than what was agreed in the risk assessment?

Ooh now we're getting into stuff I don't know too much about. There are some experts on the Employment forum, maybe repost there?

It sounds like your manager is being pretty unreasonable!

Who schedules how many times a week you do this activity? Is it your manager? What will happen if you simply say: 'We agreed in my risk assessment that I would only do this twice in one day, 2 times a week. That means that someone else needs to do x, y and z ones.'? And continue to stone-wall with responses like 'I won't be able to do that, you need to arrange for someone else to do it'.

The time to do that is when you first see the schedule which goes against your risk management plan.

Just as an observation: people generally go for the path of least resistance, and for some managers (the not so good ones!) that means finding the person who is easiest to bully instead of actually solving the problem.

The way to protect yourself against this is to
a) Not allow yourself to be bullied. No-one can actually force you to do anything.
b) If possible, find a better solution. Combined with you refusing to be bullied, this will become the path of least resistance for your manager.

Unfortunately, if you can't think of a good solution - but you don't let yourself be bullied - then your manager will probably progress to bullying the next person You do need to protect yourself though, so remember that it's your manager who ultimately needs to solve this problem, not you.

Thanks Panzee, I might repost later on.

Strawberrybubblegum: it's my manager that organises my rota. He's been on holidays for a fortnight and only came back on Friday for one day. I was told that if I felt it was not manageable then I would have to speak to admin to get them to arrange when else I could do it .... This was when I spoke to occ health who said that if it was in my risk assessment then it would have to be followed. But then yesterday I spoke to my manager's manager, who said that the risk assessment was not set in stone and could be flexible. My argument was: shouldn't there be some sort of discussion before it is broken?

It's interesting what you say about bullying ... yes, that's how I feel! He's the same age as me and less experienced, and he does like to snipe at me a little bit. But rarely enough to be something that could be used as "evidence" against him.

I just feel like everything has to be such a battle. Over the last week I've been having "discussions" with the person who organises our annual leave. I thought that I had three days extra to use up, she thought that there was "no way you could possibly have that much leave". I phoned HR and employment services, who agreed with me but she still wasn't having any of it. It wasn't until the end of today that she emailed me saying that actually, yes, I do get those days off. No apology, which I think is off since she seemed to be very obstructive. This is the NHS, it's not like it's a private company and the money comes out of her own pocket!

I accept that they are not aware of the policies regarding maternity stuff. But they seem to get nasty when I ask for something I think I'm entitled to, and just assume that I'm wrong.