Roger Williams, chief executive officer of the United
Kingdom Warehousing Association, (UKWA) considers the
challenges associated with promoting safer manual
handling and offers some pointers
Across all sectors, manuaRoger Williams, chief executive officer of the United
Kingdom Warehousing Association, (UKWA) considers the
challenges associated with promoting safer manual
handling and offers some pointers
Across all sectors, manual
handling-related accidents
account for a third of all injuries
at work that are reported in the UK. That
equates to 10.7 million working days lost
or 16.7 absent days per person in the UK
workforce each year due to a problem
thought to be related to a manual
handling injury.
In monetary terms, once compensation
payouts, lost productivity, the cost of
hiring replacement staff and other
overheads are taken into account, the
actual cost of manual handling injuryrelated
absenteeism is estimated to be
over £100m a year to the British
economy."
Manual handling injuries are putting a
strain on the NHS and the Health and
Safety Executive is becoming increasingly
concerned about the issue.
Responsible companies in the
warehousing sector will monitor accidents
- no matter how small - and have a
process for reporting near misses. But the
fact is that some practices that are a
fundamental part of every warehousing
operation are by their very nature, not
risk free.
For example, picking from a floor
based pallet involves bending and leaning
forward and, while companies should
train staff to perform the task in such a
way that puts minimal strain on their
back and other joints, it is hard to see how
the process can be made entirely risk-free.
With rather depressing anecdotal
evidence suggesting that staff completely
ignore much of the manual handling
advice they receive, warehousing
companies are increasingly looking to
their materials handling equipment
supplier to come up with equipment
which is designed with safety in mind to
reduce the number of staff days lost to
manual handling injuries.
Technology certainly has a role to play
in making the distribution centre
environment safer. For example a leading
forklift truck supplier reports a significant
trend towards greater use of powered
pallet trucks over hand pallet trucks. The
company's research shows that the risk of
injury to a worker using a hand pallet
truck is 66 per cent higher than it is for a
worker with a powered pallet truck.
The forklift supplier contends that,
while powered pallet trucks may be more
expensive as products than the hand held
alternative, once the reduction in the cost
of personal injury claims, lost working
time etc is taken in to account, many
users have concluded that they represent
better value for money.
Of course, one of the problems that
employers face, is the difficulty of proving
if someone's back problem has been
caused by their work or if it is an existing
injury.
Furthermore, while one doesn't like to
be too cynical, many employers now
believe that employment laws make it
very easy for workers to 'swing the lead' to
get time away by claiming they have, for
instance, a bad back.
I know of some cases where workers
have been sent by UKWA member
companies for an MRI scan to ascertain
the cause of their back problems and the
test results have shown that the discomfort
is due to age-related wear and tear.
In other instances employers have paid
for workers to have some form of private
physiotherapy to resolve a problem as it is
often far more cost effective than having a
worker absent for weeks on end as they
wait to be treated by the NHS."
The fact that the increase in the
number of reported manual handling
injuries has grown in tandem with the
emergence of no-win, no-fee solicitors,
may just be a coincidence, but I know
that some employers feel that there are
certain types of people who view an
accident as a potential money making
opportunity. I know of a number of sites
where CCTV cameras are used not to
monitor theft but to record the activities
of the workforce for use as evidence in the
event of a future injury claim."
While training and materials handling
equipment developments have an
important role to play in reducing manual
handling injuries, a company's 'culture' is
likely to have a big a impact in the
number of working days lost too injury
and although some sectors of the media
seem intent on portraying health and
safety as something that stops things
happening, there is more respect for
health and safety issues within industry
than there was 20 years ago.
However, no matter how much
emphasis a responsible business puts on
training and how much a company
invests in the right equipment, if an
employee is hell bent on doing something
stupid that results in him or her being
injured there is not much that anyone else
can do about it.
