Watch Your Step at Work

Tens of thousands of employees are being injured at work and a Liverpool organisation is advising on how to combat staff being harmed.

Health@Work is warning workers to beware of accidents, particularly slips and trips which cause almost 40% of all major injuries in the workplace.

According to latest HSE figures, major injuries at work are the result of two common incidents: slipping/ tripping and injuries sustained while handling, lifting or carrying. Other incidents which are also a common cause of injuries include being struck by a moving or falling object and falling from a height.

Frances Molloy, Executive Director at Health@Work said: ìEmployers are more aware now on the importance of health and safety in the workplace. On a whole the statistics do show a slight decrease in accidents at work. However slips and trips still caused 10,790 work related injuries in 2006/07 and there has even been an increase in some accidents, such as falling from a height which has risen to from 3,385 to 3,409 incidents in 2006/07.î

Laurie McMillan, Senior Workplace Health Advisor at Health@Work added: ìThere are a number of simple control measures which can be put in place to tackle the major causes of accidents in work.î Laurie suggests the following:

To tackle slips and trips:

- Put in place an effective management system, where staff have a designated person they can report potential hazards to, who will then have the resources on hand to firstly warn staff of the hazard and then resolve it

- Carry out regular inspections to identify any potential hazards and risk assess any hazards identified.

- Communicate the importance of health and safety to staff so they know the importance of identifying hazards

Manual handling control measures:

- Avoid the need for hazardous manual handling, whenever possible

- Assess any hazardous manual handling that canít be avoided to determine the risk and put in place control measures to combat these risks.

- Reduce the number of manual handling activities in the workplace, where possible by using mechanical aids such as trolleys.

Health@Work offers support and advice to businesses in all aspects of workplace health, if you require more details on how to tackle accidents in the workplace call 0151 236 6608 or e-mail info@healthatworkcentre.org.uk