How You Can Reduce Or Eliminate Manual Handling Risks In Your Workplace

How you can reduce or eliminate manual handling risks in your workplace has an answer most organisations skip. Ask the people doing the task.

Consultation with workers on health and safety matters is a duty under work health and safety law, not a courtesy. It is also the fastest route to the right answer, because the people doing a task twice an hour already know which part hurts.

What they will tell you, if asked properly, is specific. Which shelf is the problem. Which trolley nobody uses and why. Which delivery arrives packed badly. Which two-person job is routinely done alone.

Ask in the work area rather than in a meeting, ask what they would change if it were up to them, and come back with what you did about it. Consultation that produces no visible change is not repeatable.

Safe Work Australia covers the consultation duty. This is general information rather than legal advice, and obligations vary by state and territory.

See Sentrient’s manual handling course and online survey software.