Work Risk Assessment

[Nat78]

Hi Mumma's,

I am currently 22 weeks pregnant and I told my manager when I was 4 weeks that I was pregnant. Since then, she has told me we will do a risk assessment etc, but it hasn't happened. (I know they have a generic one done for the health and safety folder from the audit we had recently but not one done for me specifically.)

I have had an Occupational Health report done due to me getting back & groin pain from sitting in the chair constantly, walking far to my car due to troubles parking at or around work. OH suggested the possibility of maybe working from home which my manager said no to straight away and also suggested I do a DSE (which still hasn't been done).

Anyway, what can I do about this? It's starting to really stress me out that my manager doesn't want to protect me and it feels like she keeps trying to find excuses not to do these risk assessments. I worry that the further along I get, I will struggle coming into the office 5 days a week.

If you made it this far, thank you and I hope this makes sense just really stuck on what to do...

You need to take control here OP. You are pregnant, you need a risk assessment, legally you need one. Make that clear to HR and your manager and you cannot continue without one, if you need a DSE assessment you need to get on the ball with that as well. The DSE (at my workplace anyway) is basically just a form to fill out so you could probably get on with that yourself.

You do really need to be pushy and firm, it’s your pregnancy, your body, your baby, your needs. My workplace were I would say really good with my pregnancy but they were very laid back sorting out a risk assessment and I was very clear with my manager that I didn’t feel comfortable or safe continuing without one, I put that in a formal email (not just a quick chat at a desk) and by the end of the day it was all done. You can’t just ask to WFH but they do have to make reasonable adjustment as necessary, for me this was a different desk and desk chair, more frequent breaks etc.

Start making an audit trail, no more chats in person you need to put every request in writing, time and date stamped.

I would go back to your HR department and say that you're concerned the assessment has not yet been completed. It's their legal duty to ensure it happens so they should put some pressure on your manager.

Hi,

Thank you so much for your response. That is super helpful. I have constantly been asking about risk assessment but it never gets done. So I will email my HR now to see what can be done.

DSE as well has been quite hard to get her to find the information out for me but I think someone is helping me tomorrow with that.

Thank you again

Definitely, just make sure every single request from now on is done via email/Teams, there needs to be a record. When it’s all just in person it’s easy for it to be ignored, once you have an audit trail if it is still ignored you can go to HR/higher and show you’ve made repeated requests to sort it out and been ignored. Good luck!

You definitely need to communicate via email. Maybe write something like this . "Hi, I mentioned on 01/01/01 that I will need a risk assessment due to pregnancy related symptoms that is affecting the way that I work (mention your symptoms). Can we please arrange an assessment for this week?".

I also suffered from severe PGP and worked from home from 8 weeks. I think my manager felt sorry for me when I dragged myself to work when I was 4 weeks and nearly passed out. I ended up going on sick leave for 3 months I think so my manager agreed that it's better for me to wfh if I wanted. I also had several fit notes from my gp stating that I need adjustments at work.

Please do not stress - I know it's easier said than done. Maybe you need to mention that you're feeling stressed to OH and to your manager? Remember pregnancy is a protected characteristic.

Definitely deal directly with HR from now on. Some managers are terrible and all they see is the inconvenience of a risk assessment, whereas HR understand the legal importance of it. Be clear with HR that you notified your manager 18 weeks ago - the RA is meant to be completed as soon as they know you’re pregnant. She’s been really irresponsible in letting this continue for so long because if anything happened to you, you’d have a strong case against them. Lots of people don’t realise that the RA doesn’t just protect you, but also the company.

Get your GP on board as well. My workplace was generally ok with me, I got a RA pretty quickly and as I had multiple issues they updated it regularly. However several people (including my line manager) didn’t really get it, and as soon as I was asked to do something that was against my RA, and I said no, they got shitty with me (it was all about an unreasonable deadline when my RA stated that my stress needed to be managed due to specific medical concerns) and so the GP signed me off for a fortnight - and would have been longer if I hadn’t said I wanted to go back.