Risk ranking for small and medium medium enterprises

This report was commissioned by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to examine the practicalities of developing a risk assessment and ranking methodology for application to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The purpose of the intended methodology is to allow the full range of risks (however dissimilar in their nature) to be ranked alongside each other in order to develop a list of workplace risk priorities.

A number of existing methodologies have been reviewed for their potential to achieve these aims.

This review concluded that there were few elements of existing methodologies that would allow reliable ranking of disparate risks.