Online self assessment allows an organisation to shift responsibility onto the individual to complete risk assessments and then analyse the data generated by this process and intervene accordingly. Whereas with a manual paper based system, you might devote the same amount of resource to each person regardless of whether there is a problem or not, with an online assessment, risks are identified up front and graded for severity. Using this information, an organisation can then allocate its physical resources to where they are really needed.

Online self assessment is an ideal format for delivering and managing DSE assessments on the scale that any medium to large scale organisation is faced with. It is important to remember that online self assessments are by no means intended to replace qualified Health & Safety professionals, but rather to focus the efforts of DSE Assessors, reduce overall adminstration time and allow senior managers to concentrate on other equally pressing areas of Health & Safety.

Beyond DSE, self assessment has an important role to play in constructing blended learning programmes. Take manual handling for example. An online manual handling training course may be perfectly sufficient for office based staff, but not for employees whose job role includes more intensive handling tasks. By attaching a self assessment to the training course, the data generated by this process could provide an indication of which employees would benefit from an addtional practical training session.

Typical benefits:

• Fast deployment
• Unprecedented levels of coverage
• Prioritisation of risk
• Time and efficiency saving through reduced administration
• Improved use of physical resources
• Can be used for training needs analysis
• Eliminates the paper trail