It’s an all-too-familiar occurrence in the workplace where a worker tries to lift a heavy load and gets severely injured.
Ignoring proper lifting techniques in the workplace could lead to significant injuries and loss of valuable man-hours.
Ergonomic lifting is possible in your workplace to prevent injuries and keep your operations running. Curious about the best ways to engage workplace ergonomics to keep employees safe, take cues from the details below.
How to Engage Proper Lifting in the Workplace
Here are a few ways to engage proper lifting techniques to improve workplace ergonomics:
Set a Load Weight Limit
Setting a load weight limit is important to ensure safe and proper lifting in your workplace. Placing a limit of what weights can be carried by hand helps minimize the risk of injuries and reduces fatigue.
It is also essential to avoid lifting light or heavy loads more than fifteen (15) times every minute. Reducing lifts per minute limits the risk of stress and allows workers to complete tasks safely and efficiently.
Hold Loads Close
You need to tighten your abdominal muscles when lifting loads and push rather than pulling heavy loads. Holding loads far from your body increases the strain your back, arms, and shoulders will experience during each lift.
Position Loads Close to Your Centre of Gravity
Your body’s centre of gravity is located between your torso and upper thigh area. Positioning loads around this region gives you better control over the weight, allowing you to lift heavier loads safely.
Limit distance
Carrying heavy loads over a longer distance significantly increases the chances of injury. Place a limit on the distance employees are allowed to carry loads without the use of machinery.
Maintain proper posture
Maintaining proper posture while lifting heavy loads is possible with the following steps:
- Look ahead and keep your back in a straight stance
- Keep your chest out and leave your shoulders back
- Straighten your knees and hips while lifting
- Hold your hands close to your torso, handling the load just above your upper thigh region
Engaging in the right posture makes it easy to safely lift heavy loads without being exposed to massive risks.
Set down correctly
After lifting a load to its destination, it’s wise to set it down properly to avoid accidents. Set the load down with a correct squatting position, bending your hips and knees only.
How Can Ergonomics Help a Business?
Ergonomics relates to workers and how they interact with their environment. Proper use of ergonomics could prove useful to businesses over time. Ergonomics can help your business by:
- Preventing injuries that could lead to the loss of vital man-hours
- Providing protections for employees to perform safe lifts in the workplace
- Avoid sanctions from safety authorities that could arise from a lifting accident and many more.
Engaging ergonomics properly makes it easy to increase output into your business and prevent avoidable losses.
Advanced Consulting & Training – Mandatory Safety Awareness
It’s important to use mechanical aids in lifting heavy loads in the workplace. Engaging some equipment to make a lifting for your employees will boost your overall productivity.
It also helps to consult with an experienced safety company to train your workers how to engage in ergonomic lifting effectively. At Advanced Consulting & Training, we offer a Mandatory Safety Awareness course. This course is designed to prevent injuries and illnesses while teaching owners, employers, supervisors, and workers their role in a safe workplace.
If you’re interested in building a safer workplace and improving your workplace ergonomics, contact us today!
