Manual Handling

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 is reasonably practicable

• 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