The WHS legislation in Australia has had a particular focus on manual tasks (also referred to as manual handling) since the publication of the National Standard and Code of Practice for Safe Manual Handling in 1990.

Australian safety regulators have invested substantial resources over many years to facilitate the effective risk management of hazardous manual tasks across a variety of industry sectors. However, in changing my role from working for a regulator to that of an industry consultant, I have observed that there is a far from perfect fit between compliance as imagined to what organizations implement to manage their injury risks for injury prevention from hazardous manual tasks.

This presentation draws on my recent consulting work providing expert liability reports for hazardous manual task related matters along with other project work. In drawing from over 80 cases, several recurrent themes emerge which indicate non-compliant employer processes and practices.

There are significant gaps in most employers’ safety management systems across industry sectors and organisation size and complexity. My findings demonstrate that current organisational systems and practices for managing risks of MSD caused by hazardous manual tasks are far from a perfect fit with WHS legislative requirements. Themes identified include; workplace consultation mechanisms, training and capability, supervisor and leadership behaviours, the types of targets and measures assessed and reported upon, assurance activities, hazardous manual tasks risk assessment processes (or lack of) and incident investigation processes.

Forget any debate on which hazardous manual task risk assessment tool is the most appropriate, in many organisations, the real conversation hasn’t started yet. Finding an organization that is doing MSD prevention well and complying with the WHS legislation might well be the unicorn.

An HFE approach to more practicable legislation and effective guidance for a better fit appears to be long overdue.