Offices are generally low risk environments, but there still remains the potential for injury and ill health.
In the office, physical hazards may arise for example, from maintenance and alteration works, electrical equipment, trailing leads, space constraints and wet floors. Health hazards are a significant risk, in particular, stress and ergonomic factors. There are also the less frequently occurring hazards of fire and security threats which must be accounted for in risk management arrangements and emergency plans.
In many cases it will be reasonable to conduct a ‘generic risk assessment’ for all office areas, but it will be necessary to check that it fits the dangers in the particular office work area. A fire safety risk assessment will generally need to be a stand alone document and take all aspects of fire safety and means of escape into account.
The main areas of health and safety law relevant to office safety are:
By James Murphy
08/11/2016
HS Direct
I don't have Microsoft Office or Microsoft Word, what should I do?
If you don't have Microsoft Office, or Microsoft Word installed on your PC or Mac, don't worry - you can still use our products. You can get a free alternative from Open Office.
Open Office Org is open-source developed alternative to Microsoft Office, developed by a large software company called Oracle. Open Source means the company who build the software, allow 100% use of it, 100% free.
Since Open Office is specifically developed to be exactly the same as Microsoft Office, with all the same programs in the suite (Eg: Word, Excel, Access and Power Point) - it will freely open any Microsoft Office file-format. Meaning, just because a document was written in Microsoft Word, doesn't mean it can't be opened in another program. Open Office will do that, and vise versa.
To download and install Open Office;