Equally, one has to ask the question: how are YOU as an employer when it comes to Manual Handling?Hopefully, you’re all clued up, because whether you’re an employer or an employee, you have responsibilities which are regulated by legislation and the penalties for not complying are onerous. The cost to both of you can be high both in compensation claims, time off work, loss of earnings, loss of productivity and long-term illness. Ignorance is not a mitigating factor.
Employers must comply with the risk assessment requirements set out in the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 as well as the requirement in the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 (MHOR) to carry out a risk assessment on manual handling tasks.
If you are an employee, you must make full use of any safe system of manual handling your employer puts in place.
Regulation 4(1) of MHOR sets out a hierarchy of measures to reduce the risks of manual handling.
- avoid hazardous manual handling operations so far as is reasonably practicable
- assess any hazardous manual handling operations that cannot be avoided
- reduce the risk of injury so far as is reasonably practicable
You must also review your assessments if they become out of date or if the tasks they refer to change.
Employees have general health and safety duties to:
- follow appropriate systems of work laid down for their safety
- make proper use of equipment provided for their safety
- co-operate with their employer on health and safety matters
- take care to ensure that their activities do not put others at risk
Obviously, risk assessment is required, but besides that you can take an immediate step towards meeting your obligations with appropriate training in Manual Handling.
Contact us for details of the cost-effective and fully recorded, step-by-step online training. We also have other very relevant training available for workplace safety such as Working at Heights, Fire Safety, Driver Awareness and working in specialist environments such as catering and aged care.
Or watchword is “Good health and safety doesn’t happen by accident” and our mission is to assist organisations, however small, escape from bad health and safety in their businesses.
