1. Overview
As an employer, you must protect your workers from the risk of injury from hazardous manual handling in the workplace. Manual handling means transporting or supporting a load by hand or bodily force. It includes lifting, putting down, pushing, pulling, carrying or moving loads. A load can be an object, person or animal.
The law sets out how employers must deal with risks from manual handling:
- avoid hazardous manual handling, so far as reasonably practicable[6]
- assess the risk of injury from any hazardous manual handling operations that cannot be avoided
- reduce the risk of injury from hazardous manual handling to as low as reasonably practicable
The weight of a load is important, though the law does not set specific weight limits.
In some cases, you must provide information[7] about the weight and position of the centre of gravity of each load, if there is a risk of injury and it is reasonably practicable to do this.