Kelly Rose
Editor
Kelly Rose
Editor
According to the HSE, manual handling is one of the most common causes of injury at work, causing more than a third of all workplace injuries. Hugh Owen, from health and safety consultancy, 4see, examines the dangers and the importance of ‘getting it right’.
The HSE defines manual handling as the moving of items either by lifting, lowering, carrying, pushing or pulling. Injuries can be caused because of the amount of times you have to pick up or carry an item, the distance you are carrying it, the height you are picking it up from or putting it down at and any twisting, bending stretching or other awkward posture you may get in whilst doing a task.
What is covered?
The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992, as amended in 2002, apply to a wide range of manual handling activities. The load may be either animate, such as a person or an animal, or inanimate, such as a box or a trolley.
What’s the problem?
Incorrect manual handling is one of the most common causes of injury at work. It causes work related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) which account for more than a third of all workplace injuries.
Controlling the risks
As part of managing the health and safety of your business, you must control the risks in your workplace. This need not be onerous. You need to think about what might cause harm to people and decide whether you are doing enough to prevent harm. The process, known as risk assessment, is something you are required by law to carry out.
A risk assessment is simply about identifying and taking sensible and proportionate measures to control the risks in your workplace. It is not about creating huge amounts of paperwork. You are probably already taking steps to protect your employees, but your risk assessment will help you decide whether you should be doing more.
Employers should think about how accidents and ill health could happen and concentrate on real risks – those that are most likely and which will cause the most harm. Think about your workplace activities, processes and the substances used that could injure your employees or harm their health.
• Reduce the risk of injury from hazardous manual handling, so far as is reasonably practicable.
What can I do?
Make a record of your significant findings – the hazards, how people might be harmed by them and what you have in place to control the risks. Any record produced should be simple and focused on controls.
If you have fewer than five employees you do not have to write anything down. But it is useful to do this so you can review it at a later date, for example if something changes. If you have five or more employees, you are required by law to write it down. Few workplaces stay the same, so it makes sense to review what you are doing regularly.
Completing an assessment
By using a table based on the TILE format (Task, Individual, Load, Environment), it is possible to identify the main hazards and implement the most reasonably practicable solutions to reduce risks.
The Task element looks at the different types of task and what they involve. When assessing the Individual, consideration should be given to the person – do they need extra strength, might a woman be pregnant etc? Load considerations should consider bulk, whether it is possibly harmful and whether it is awkwardly stacked. And when considering the Environment, you should consider floor conditions, outside elements such as the weather and any restrictions because of safety clothing.
In all four TILE areas for consideration, an employer’s prime concern should always be to assess ways of reducing risk.
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