Manual handling training unequivocally symbolises the statement ‘prevention is better than cure’.
Manual handling training provides the workforce with the knowledge, training and experience of good safe practice within the workplace. To safely learn 6 benefits for your employees of manual handling training, please make sure you are sitting up straight, have a good posture and you are in a well-lit room. When you are ready, please read on.
1. Manual Handling Training Raises Awareness
First of all, manual handling training raises awareness to employees of the risks associated to manual handling and the injuries that can occur as a result of poor practice. Employees will benefit from a greater understanding of the potential dangers they may or may not be currently undertaking. Teaching your employees the consequences of poor practice and the injuries that may be caused to them, it will heighten the importance of good practice. However, just raising awareness of the dangers and consequences will not ensure that good practices is implemented into their work.
2. Manual Handling Training Teaches Good Practice
As manual handling training teaches your employees the consequences related to poor practice they will benefit from being taught the opposite of bad practice, good practice. Employees will be taught the knowledge of good practice, how to carry out safe manual handling in the future with good handling techniques. This will enable employees the ability to start implementing good practice techniques within their own work.
3. Manual Handling Training Teaches Employees in their Environment
Employees can greatly benefit from manual handling training taking place within their own working environment. This allows employees to directly assimilate the techniques and practices they are being taught into their own working practice. This advances the level of training experience received as employees can see first-hand how to implement these techniques and will be much more likely to do so as a result.
4. Manual Handling Training Teaches Employees How To Use Mechanical Aids
As employees will benefit from being taught good practice within their environment, being taught how to correctly use the mechanical aids within their environment will be greatly beneficial to ensuring their safety when using such machines. Employees using mechanical aids should have been briefed and understood the safety requirements prior to using those machines however, this does not ensure the best safe practice is used. By teaching employees on-site how to use mechanical aids safely first hand these techniques are more likely to be implemented by employees. Teaching employees within their own environment using machines they will use greatens the relevancy to your employees and increases their involvement which improves the likelihood those practices will be implemented as a result.
5. Manual Handling Training Benefits Employees by Learning through Experience
Throughout a training course of manual handling training employees are reminded of the best practice techniques to use whilst working in their own work environment. As the teaching takes place within the workers environment they will be able to incorporate what they have learnt into their practices. This training allows employees to note, individually, where they may have been making mistakes with their own technique in the past and provides the solutions to rectify those errors as well as the benefits and consequences of integrating or not integrating best practice into their daily operations. Employees make mistakes and bad habits are developed however, manual handling training provides the opportunity for employees to correct these potentially dangerous bad habits and put into practice the lessons they have been taught within their own working environment.
6. Manual Handling Training Promotes a Healthy Workforce
Manual handling training promotes the use of good practice within the workforce which will ideally culminate in the creation of a healthy workforce, safer from the impending dangers of their workplace. It is widely believed that a healthy workforce is a more productive workforce and manual handling training invokes this through the teaching of good, efficient and safe practice within the workplace.
To find out more about the benefits of employee manual handling training, you can visit www.ofi.co.uk.
Leave a Reply