Don’t let back pain be your legal headache...
Nearly a third of all workplace accidents reported to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) involve manual handling. Injured backs end the career of thousands of people every year in Britain and the pain and disability suffered by those and others is immense.

The Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) http://www.hse.gov.uk/legislation/hswa.htm , requires employers to take reasonable care of their employees. The Manual Handling Operations Regulations (1992) http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/books/l23.htm give further guidance and require employers to adopt an ergonomic approach to removing or reducing the risk of manual handling injuries and to ensure that systems of work and the working environment are safe. The ergonomic approach looks at manual handling as a whole, taking into account a wide range of relevant factors including the nature of the task, the load, the working environment and the individual capability.

Ergoway is committed to continuous quality improvement and therefore believes that the ergonomic focused systems provide a necessary framework to assist in the achievement of Quality and Safety. The NHS Litigation Authority (NHSLA), Monitor and Care Quality Commission (CQC) expect organisations to comply with recommendations from external agencies and will require evidence to demonstrate that your organisation has a robust process as part Essential Standards of quality and safety. Your Organisation has a duty of care to ensure that:

Minimum requirements for the “manual handling” of “loads” are followed where there is a particular, but not exclusive, risk of musculoskeletal injury to workers.

The need for “manual handling” is avoided or, when it cannot be avoided, an Ergonomic Assessment is made of the operation and where there is a risk of injury appropriate steps taken to reduce or avoid that risk.

Assessment of “manual handling” operations take into account factors which include characteristics of the load, the physical effort required characteristics of the working environment and the requirements of the task. Information, training and supervision are provided to workers and Managers on Assessment and “manual handling” principles.

Arrangements are in place for competent manual handling and back care advice. This is achieved via access to a Manual Handling Consultant and sufficient resource to function effectively.