Manual Handling Aids: Extra Safety for Lifting, Pushing and Pulling Tasks
Table of Contents
Manual handling aids are the equipment that puts the force of lifting, pushing, and pulling onto wheels, hydraulics, or motors instead of using your spine and shoulders. Those three movements are part of most workplaces, including warehouse work, aged care, construction, hospitality, and retail. Which aid suits the job depends on what you are moving, where you are moving it, and how much room you have.
What is Manual Handling?
Manual handling covers any task where you use your body to move something. Lifting a box, lowering a crate, pushing a trolley, pulling a pallet jack, carrying tools, and supporting a patient are all manual handling. Under the model WHS Regulations, a hazardous manual task involves one or more of the following:
- repetitive or sustained force
- high or sudden force
- repetitive movement
- sustained or awkward posture
- exposure to vibration
These five factors can damage muscles, tendons, ligaments, discs, and nerves. Injuries of that kind are grouped together as musculoskeletal disorders. Some happen in a single moment, such as a disc injury from one bad lift. Others can develop across months of small strains, and you may not notice the damage until the pain stops you working.
What Are Manual Handling Aids?
Manual handling aids are equipment that reduce the force your body applies to a load. Some remove the lift entirely, while others lower the force, improve your grip, or bring the work to a better height. There are six broad groups of manual handling aids.
Wheeled aids move a load horizontally so you push them instead of lifting. This includes flat platform trolleys, sack trucks, drum trolleys, wheelie bins, laundry skips, and manual pallet jacks.
Lifting devices raise or lower a load. Chain blocks, gantry hoists, patient hoists, scissor lift tables, drum lifters, and vacuum lifters take the vertical lift away from your arms and back.
Sliding and transfer aids remove friction so a load glides rather than needing to be lifted. Slide sheets, transfer boards, roller tracks, ball transfer tables, and turntables are used where something moves a short distance sideways.
Height adjustment equipment brings the work to your level. Adjustable benches, pallet levellers, tilt tables, and platform risers keep the load between your knees and your shoulders, the zone where your back is under the least strain.
Grip aids improve your contact with an awkward object. Clip-on handles for sheets, panel carriers, lifting straps, hooks, clamps, and gloves with textured palms let you use less force for the same result.
Powered equipment does the work with a motor. Electric pallet trucks, powered tugs, conveyors, forklifts, and order pickers move loads that no person should move by hand. Some of this equipment requires a high risk work licence, including forklifts, order-picking forklifts, and some cranes and hoists.
Risk Management and The Hierarchy of Control
WHS laws place a duty on your employer to eliminate the risk of a musculoskeletal disorder from a hazardous manual task, or to minimise that risk so far as is reasonably practicable where elimination is not possible. Control options are ranked, and that ranking is called the hierarchy of control. It puts the most reliable options first.
Elimination comes first. If the task doesn’t exist, then there’s no risk. A pallet delivered straight to the point of use is never double handled, or storeroom step taken out of the process is a lift nobody needs to do again.
Where the task cannot be eliminated, the risk must be minimised. Substitution, isolation, and engineering controls are the next tier, and manual handling aids belong here. A trolley, a hoist, or a lift table changes the physical demand of the job.
Administrative controls come next. Team lifting, rotating tasks, longer time allowances, and written procedures change how people do the task.
Personal protective equipment is last. Gloves and safety boots protect against cuts and dropped loads. They do not lower the force on your spine, so they are not counted as a control for manual task risk.
Matching an Aid to the Load, the Route, and the Space
The same load may need different equipment depending on the circumstances. Which manual handling aids you choose should depend on every aspect of the trip.
The load sets the first limits. Its weight, dimensions, shape, and rigidity determine what can grip it. Every aid has a safe weight capacity marked on it. The load also has to fit on the aid without hanging over the edge, which risks tipping the aid. How an aid grips an aid depends on its shape. A flexible or moving load needs a support or a strap to keep it still.
The route determines which manual handling aids can be used. A route that gets reused a lot can take installed equipment, such as a roller track or a ceiling hoist, while a route that changes needs transportable equipment.
The space decides whether the manual handling aid can be used at all. Equipment that cannot fit through the doorway, rotate, or fit beside the task will be abandoned. Check the clearance at both ends of the trip, not just the space between them. Congestion counts as a hazard in this regard; a forklift and pedestrians in the same space create a new hazard while removing an old one.
Push rather than pull wherever you can. Pushing lets you use your body weight, keeps your spine in a better position, and gives you a view of what is in front of the load.
Enrol in Manual Handling Training to Perform Hazardous Tasks Safely
Manual handling aids can be versatile, but none suits every job. The choice is made against the job in front of you rather than against how useful the equipment is in general. Equipment on its own will not tell you which of your tasks are hazardous, how to weigh up the risk, or what to do when the aid is unavailable and the job is still expected of you. A manual handling course gives you the skills to judge a task before you start it, an understanding of your WHS legal duties, and supervised practice with the equipment used in your industry. Enrol in manual handling training to know whether or not the right aid is already in the room.
FAQs
Do I Need a Licence to Use a Pallet Jack?
A licence is not required for a hand pallet jack, or for a walk-behind powered pallet truck where you stay on foot. However, your employer must still train you and verify your competence on any equipment, licensed or not.
Can My Employer Charge Me for a Manual Handling Aid?
No. WHS laws prohibit an employer from imposing a charge on workers for any measure taken to protect your health and safety at work. Manual handling aids supplied to reduce the risk of a manual task is one of those measures, so the cost of it belongs to the business.
What is the Difference Between WHS and OHS?
Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) is the national standard for workplace safety laws. Victoria has its own standards, Occupational Health and Safety (OHS), which is also the name best known for these laws before WHS was introduced.
Are Back Belts and Support Braces Manual Handling Aids?
Safe Work Australia does not treat back belts as a control for manual task risk, and they are not accepted as a substitute for changing the task or supplying equipment. Wearing one does not lower the load on your spine.
