Employers must manage the risks arising from hazardous manual handling tasks. How is this best done?
If you’ve ever broken your foot and spent weeks lurching about with a moon boot and crutches, you might have noticed people can see you’ve been injured, they assume it’s not your fault, and for the most part, they’re ever so ready and willing to help.
But with an invisible injury – like a mental health issue, hearing loss, or a bad back – the story is entirely different. People can’t see the injury, so they’re often not aware of it and don’t make allowances for it. Even if they know about it, they may believe you’re exaggerating your symptoms or assume it’s your own fault – you were careless, or have some weak points, or just weren’t able to cope.
‘Bad backs’ resulting from ‘work injuries’ are notoriously prone to negative views – it’s not hard to find someone who’ll tell you stories about others they know who (they believe) have rorted the system with fraudulent claims of back injuries.
In reality, cases of workers' comp fraud that slip through the system unnoticed are very rare these days, especially compared to the high levels in the general population of strains, sprains, and pains from bad backs, shoulders, necks, knees, and so on. These kinds of physical conditions are collectively known as ‘musculoskeletal injuries’, as they can involve damage to muscles, bones, and many other kinds of tissues such as cartilage, tendons, and nerves.
Thousands of musculoskeletal injuries sustained while people are working never show up in workers comp statistics because the injured workers are not covered by the workers' comp system – for example, they might be sole traders, casuals, or working in a small family business. Some injured workers may choose not to claim compensation because they think it might harm their reputation or their career.
Among those with serious injuries who do make a successful claim for compensation, musculoskeletal injuries are consistently top of the list, in terms of the number of people injured every year at work.
Injuries from manual handling
Musculoskeletal injuries typically result from activities involving the manual handling of loads, or repeated stressful actions and movements. ‘Manual handling’ means any activity requiring the use of force exerted by a person to lift, lower, push, pull, carry or otherwise move, hold or restrain a person, animal or thing. If manual tasks are poorly designed or done incorrectly, they can be hazardous.
Of course, manual handling hazards can cause many other types of injuries, as well as musculoskeletal disorders. Falls, fractures, burns, lacerations, and many other kinds of harm can result from moving or holding loads, picking them up, putting them down, and otherwise lugging them about.
Employers’ duties to manage manual handling risks
Risks arising from hazardous manual handling tasks must be managed, along with other health and safety risks. The first step in managing the risks is identifying tasks that present a risk. This can be done by observing the tasks carried out in your workplace – if they involve repetitive movements, repetitive or sustained force, high or sudden force, sustained or awkward postures, or exposure to vibration, chances are they could pose a manual handling risk.
Other methods that help to identify manual handling risks include talking with the people doing the work and with their supervisors and examining injury, incident, and workers comp records as well as reported industry experience.
If manual handling risks are identified, employers are required by work health and safety laws to eliminate them if they can, or if that’s not feasible, to minimise the risks as far as is reasonably practicable.
The best and most cost-effective way to eliminate or minimise manual handling risks is to consider them at the design and planning stage of a workplace or a job. During this stage, hazards and risks can be ‘designed out’ before they are introduced into a workplace.
Designers, manufacturers, importers, and suppliers of plant and structures also have duties under WHS laws to make sure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that products don’t pose manual handling risks when they’re used for the purpose for which they were designed or manufactured.
If risks cannot be or have not been removed at the stage of designing the workplace or work systems or purchasing new equipment, risks can often be controlled by modifying the way work is organised and carried out, so as to minimise the strain on people’s bodies.
Many examples of how this can be done are provided in the Model Code of practice: Hazardous manual tasks.
