Manual Handling Awareness Training

The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 require employers to avoid hazardous manual handling where reasonably practicable, assess what cannot be avoided, and reduce the risk. Providing information and training is part of meeting that duty, although no specific course is named in law.

The online module is thirty minutes and teaches anyone to assess a load before they lift it. It is the right answer for a whole workforce who occasionally lift a box. The half day classroom session has people handling real loads and being corrected while they do it, and that is what you want where lifting is the job rather than an occasional part of it.

This course trains your people. Manual Handling Train the Trainer trains one of your people to deliver it to everyone else, which is usually the cheaper route once you are training more than a couple of dozen a year. There is also an NPORS manual handling card course, which is the one to ask for when a site is asking for a card rather than a certificate.

There is no legal maximum. The HSE publish guideline filter figures that vary with where the load is held in relation to the body, and they are a screening tool rather than safe limits. Two people can face the same load with very different risk depending on the task, the environment and their own capability, which is what the assessment is for.

Every three years is typical, and sooner if the work, the loads or the equipment change, or if injuries and near misses suggest the message has not landed.

The assessment content works well live online. The practical handling does not, so for a workforce that actually lifts, we would recommend the classroom or onsite version and keep live online for supervisors and assessors.

Yes, where we deliver onsite. Walking the workplace during the session tends to produce a short list of practical changes, and those usually remove more risk than the training itself.

Acadame. It is general awareness training rather than a regulated qualification, which is the right shape for this subject: it is built around what your people actually do and it can be adapted to your own equipment, substances and procedures. Where a regulated qualification is what you need instead, we will say so and point you at it.

Yes, anywhere in the UK, and it is usually the better option. Training on your own equipment, in your own building, with your own procedures in front of people, transfers to the job in a way a generic venue does not.

Up to twelve on a standard session. For practical subjects we will talk through numbers with you, because a room of twenty watching two people practise is not training.