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TRAINING & EDUCATION OUT OF SHAPE


Davy Snowdon, Founder of Pristine Condition, explains why generic manual handling training programmes don’t cut the mustard in today’s workplace – just ask an Olympic weightlifter.


Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) remain one of the most frequent types of work-related injury across most industry sectors. Despite efforts to reduce this through legislation and better risk management, it can rarely be eliminated.


Even when the risk is significantly reduced, if an item has to be moved manually, a residual risk remains. Why are MSDs still so prevalent? Because conventional methods of addressing this remaining risk are not effective.


Reducing handling injuries is about changing people’s habits; exchanging a bad one for a good one, which itself has three drivers: individuals must buy into the change, overseers must monitor take-up of the change, and finally, management must support staff to maintain the change. The harsh reality is that initiatives fail when any of these key elements is deficient.


When it comes to manual handling training though, conventional wisdom overlooks one simple fact: the body doesn’t tell you every time you get it wrong, only when you’ve got it wrong too often – when it’s too late.


Consider that statement in the context of what is probably the most extreme manual handling task you’ll come across: Olympic weightlifting. Injury is a huge fear for any athlete and weightlifters are no exception, yet even when they fail a lift, they don’t get injured.


Olympic weightlifting has evolved with athletes striving for anatomical technical perfection to minimise the pressure they place on their body. So, even though they’re moving weights far beyond so-called “safe” guidelines, weightlifters rarely suffer injuries. This shows that avoiding injury is not primarily about weight, but about technique.


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Conventional manual handling training is too generic, with its unrealistic scenarios of lifting empty cardboard boxes from perfectly flat floors onto precisely positioned, waist-high tables. Your employees’ workplace isn’t like that, so don’t be surprised when they don’t buy into that message.


Faced with techniques that don’t work in their real world, employees quickly revert to old habits. Worse still, they emotionally disengage from the whole process, so their belief now is “you can’t do it like that where I work” – an attitude that then goes unchallenged.


To get employee buy-in, you need to deliver practical training, using lifting principles that every individual will buy into because they genuinely believe they will reduce their chances of injury. Those principles need to be easy to follow and applicable to any handling scenario.


Crucially though, training needs to be delivered in an engaging way, so it’s remembered positively. A “Death by PowerPoint” approach is not likely to capture your audience’s imagination.


Once this base level is attained, it needs to be sustained. Challenging poor behaviour rarely happens for manual handling compared to other safety issues. If you walk into most warehouses without high visibility PPE, you’ll soon be challenged by someone on the shop floor about your behaviour. Why? Because the company has made it abundantly clear what is right and what is wrong.


“WHEN IT COMES TO MANUAL HANDLING TRAINING, CONVENTIONAL WISDOM OVERLOOKS ONE SIMPLE FACT: THE BODY DOESN’T TELL YOU EVERY TIME YOU GET IT WRONG, ONLY WHEN YOU’VE GOT IT WRONG TOO OFTEN – WHEN IT’S TOO LATE.”


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