This risk tool post is about the second step in a risk assessment, so if you haven’t read the first post, we recommend you to read the first post to find out why it is so important to do a risk assessment in your organization and how to get started!   

Step 2: Evaluate the hazards and rate the risk  

Once you have identified the types of hazards in step 1, you may face in the project, you will need to evaluate each of them and rate the level of risk to the staff, the firm and its project. This step helps clarify how severe (or not) the risk is, and how much priority it must be given.  

There exist different risk rating systems, depending on the project, geographically, nationality, staff or regionality. Below are two tables you can use to determine the risk rating for each hazard that has been identified. However, in a new situation where firms and organizations have not recently been undertaken, it may be necessary to use data from similar projects combined with current information from sources.

Tip: The definitions for each level should be agreed across the firm to make it possible to compare different contexts!

First, this assessment helps identify areas that are priorities for your project or the firm, specifically those risks that are more likely to happen and whose impact if they happen would be moderate to critical.
Second it helps in determining when a risk has become too high for projects to continue.

The tables could end up depicts the following conclusions from a discussion in the team:

Sources:  

Damon P. Coppola (2015) “Introduction to international disaster management” 

European interagency security forum (2020) “Security to go: A risk management toolkit for humanitarian aid agencies” 

Humanitarian Practice Network (2010) “Good practice review – Operational security management in violent environment”