Interviews

Interviews are useful for identifying more risks in areas and departments where the risk manager may not be familiar. The task is conducted by selecting a small amount of members of staff and spending 5 – 10 minutes discussing uncertainties that could occur in their particular field.

For example, a top level manager of a retail store will have little idea on the health and safety risks apparent on the shop floor because most of his work is conducted in an office. This is where an interview of employees who operate in that particular area on a day-to-day basis can be beneficial for risk identification.

Interviews are commonly conducted after brainstorming to allow “specialists” of particular areas (such as the shop floor worker) to provide further risk identifications than those covered by non-specialists (the risk manager).

Surveys

Surveys are used in exactly the same context as interviews, but instead of targeting a few members of staff, a much wider selection is used. This helps to gather more ideas, but it has one major downfall in that it there can be too much information gathered leading to wasted time searching through results that generally state the same uncertainties.