07/02/2008

London, January 28th 2008

Companies across the UK and Ireland are under increasing pressure from their respective health and safety authorities to wise up to manual handling regulations or face potential prosecution. In response ALISON has partnered with leading health and safety industry experts, Praxis42, to, provide a range of essential health & safety e-learning courses.

Chris Griffin, Sales and Marketing Manager at Praxis42, emphasizes that "If a company’s employees have to lift, carry, lower, push or pull loads, then the manual handling regulations apply. This means that employers must undertake a risk assessment, and must also ensure that their employees know about the risks associated with manual handling, such as identifying obvious risks and hazards and knowing how to deal with them."

Manual handling accounts for over 38 percent of all lost time accidents at work, and instances of absence from work due to back pain increase every year. This is a clear illustration that companies are failing in their legal duties and could be at increased risk of prosecution or of expensive legal claims being made against them.

Praxis42 and ALISON advise that if employees have any kind of manual handling in the course of their work, then the provision of training to ensure that they are aware of the risks and how to perform safe manual handling operations is not a matter or choice but an absolute legal requirement. Many injuries in the workplace arise from poor layouts and storage, poor lifting techniques, lifting, pulling and pushing difficult or excessive loads, and a general poor knowledge due to lack of sufficient training.

Chris continued: "Manual handling accidents and injuries in the workplace could be significantly reduced by following a simple and cost effective training programme."

Praxis42 has updated its Manual Handling course to follow the UK Health and Safety Executive’s Guides and Notes to ensure that organization’s are legally compliant with current manual handling regulations. The course has been developed by health and safety experts and instructional designers to produce a quality training experience that is extremely effective in reducing the risk of injuries. The course is delivered online and is available free on ALISON (http://alison.com).

The aim of the course is to provide trainees with an awareness of the hazards of the workplace and precautions relating to all manual handling operations. It offers the further benefit of a learning management system (ALISON Manager) which records all of the training events and makes them available to view and manage electronically, solving any record-keeping compliance issues.

ENDS

ALISON