Risk assessment - ergonomics

It’s not just office workers who need protecting from musculoskeletal disorders, as workers in all sectors and sizes of organisation are affected. Use our risk assessment to gain an in-depth understanding of the risk that your staff face in their daily activities.

When to use the form?

If your staff undertake repetitive tasks, or they are complaining of going home with general aches and pains, you need to consider a more detailed risk assessment. Each task should be considered, and ideally each individual who does the task should be assessed, as we are all different and react to hazards in unique ways.

As well as demonstrating to your staff that you are taking their health seriously, our Risk Assessment - Ergonomics will provide you with a document for your management system.

What’s covered?

The form looks at the task and the movement of the individual in far more depth than a simple manual handling risk assessment. Each of the ten sections on the form assesses the workspace, the activity and most importantly the repetitive arm, shoulder and neck movements undertaken which could lead to long-term health problems. Each section is designed to score the impact, and this can then be collated onto the summary sheet. This gives you an instant overview of whether there is likely to be a problem and it guides you to the level of controls that you should apply. Unusually in the field of health and safety, the higher the score the better the risk is being managed.

You will need to adapt the assessment to suit your business.

record keeping

The completed form should be kept for a minimum of three years, but as this is recording potential health issues which may be diagnosed some way in the future, it’s recommended to keep it for longer. Remember that if there are any significant changes to either the activity or the individual, e.g. pregnancy orreturning from sickness absence, which may affect their ability to undertake the task, then this assessment should be reviewed and updated.