Introduction

The use of poor or incorrect moving and handling techniques accounts for a significant number of injuries in the UK workforce. Over 10% of all major injuries, which includes fractures, sprains etc., are as a result of poor manual handling. Further analysis of the data shows that the back is the most commonly injured part of the body when a moving and handling accident occurs and that the injured person is commonly ‘off work’ for ‘over three days’.

Reducing the risk of injury to an employee is of critical importance to both the worker and the employer. The employee will suffer obvious pain and inconvenience, the employer the risk of a claim for personal injury, loss of staff time and probable staff turn-over.

There are many approaches that can be taken to effectively reduce the risk, including risk assessment and reduction, but ensuring that staff have received appropriate training and that the training is up-to-date will significantly reduce the risk of injury to staff whilst undertaking manual handling activity.

Courses

We currently offer the following manual handling courses, which teach basic manual handling of inanimate objects …

Chartered Institute of Environmental Health

Principles of Manual Handling

We also offer the following risk assessment course which is applicable to manual handling …

Risk Assessment for Manual Handling

Moving and Handling People

Our manual handling courses teach you how to correctly lift and move inanimate objects such as boxes, furniture, trolleys. They do not teach you the skills needed to assist in moving and handling people.

We currently offer the following moving and handling people courses, further details of which can be found in the Moving and Handling section of this website.

Safer Moving and Handling People

Lend-a-Helping-Hand for Social Car Scheme Drivers

Risk Assessment for Moving and Handling People

Background

The back is the most commonly injured part of the body when manual handling is undertaken incorrectly using poor techniques.