Workplace Health and Safety

Workplace Health and Safety Student Program
Office and Business Industry (Continued)

What You Can Do

Arrange your work area to ensure all materials, equipment and controls can be easily reached without stretching or twisting.
Check your posture before commencing working and adjust your furniture to enable you to maintain a good forward facing posture while keying.
Start keyboard work slowly each day to warm up to the task, and cool down by reducing your keystroke rate at the end of each day.
Never accumulate work breaks.
Report breakdowns or malfunctions of your equipment or furniture immediately to your supervisor.

Manual Handling

Manual Handling refers to activities such as lifting, carrying, pushing and pulling.

The injuries that are most commonly associated with manual handling activities include sprains and strains, back pain, damage to the back and hernias.

Some of these injuries occur when very demanding tasks are performed, such as having to lift a very heavy box. However, most of these injuries are the result of gradual wear and tear on the joints and muscles that is caused by frequent or prolonged periods of manual handling.

Therefore many of the manual handling injuries experienced by older employees are the result of wear and tear that started when they were young.

Manual handling may not injure you now, but it will effect you in later life.

Manual handling hazards - not just the weight

What makes performing a manual handling task hazardous? The weight of the objects involved is obviously an important factor in increasing the likelihood or risk of a manual handling injury. However, weight is not the only factor involved. Some of the other important factors are discussed below.

The movements you must use to pick up carry and deposit the object

Awkward movements, such as twisting, bending, over-reaching can greatly increase the strain on your back.

How difficult it is to carry the object
Objects that you cannot hold close to the body place a greater strain on your back.

How often, how quickly and for how long you must do the job.

What Your Employer Should Do

Your employer is required to assess and control manual handling tasks that are hazardous.

This must be done by using lifting equipment and other manual handling aids to eliminate the need to move things manually, and by providing manual handling training.

Where this is not practical, this can be done by making improvements to the jobs by tackling some of the other factors that can make the job hazardous

At times it can be difficult for employers to completely eliminate manual handling jobs. However, just as there are other things than weight that make a job hazardous, so there are other things that an employer can do to improve jobs.

These could include:

storing objects on benches and middle height shelves (to reduce the amount of bending and reaching);
storing materials in containers that are easy to pick up and carry; and
sharing the manual handling jobs between a number of employees.

What You Can Do

Report to your employer any manual handling tasks you find difficult to do.

Noise

Relatively low noise levels, such as those in offices, typically average between 40 and 75 dB(A) over an 8 hour period. These noise levels depend on the interior construction and the activities carried out. Under these conditions, low levels of noise are not capable of causing noise induced hearing loss. However, they are capable of causing stress and other adverse health effects.

People may experience noise related stress factors as:

irritability, headaches, moodiness and insomnia;
loss of concentration;
speech interference.

The body will try to cope with the situation but when no relief is in sight then more serious health affects may occur, such as:

raised blood pressure and heart rate;
reduced immune response;
gastric ulcers.

This in turn may result in:

increased absenteeism;
reduced productivity due to fatigue and loss of concentration;
reduced quality of work/product/service;
reduced ability to communicate - eg. telephone conversations due to speech and understanding spoken words interference.

Telephone operators wearing headsets should be particularly aware of sudden loud shrieks from for instance sending faxes over telephone lines or other electrical causes.

Your employer should have a policy for handling and follow up of such incidents which should include hearing tests and rest periods for the affected ear.

The Workplace Health and Safety (Noise) Advisory Standard indicates that where noise levels fall in the range of 65 to 85 dB(A) as average over an 8 hour as average over an 8 hour period and workers, or others, indicated this to be a problem the noise should be assessed and control measures implemented where it is shown that a risk exists.

Electricity

Numerous electrical appliances and machinery are used in this industry. Some examples include electric staplers and hole punches, telephones, photocopiers, computers, printers, and typewriters.

The proper maintenance and installation of electrical equipment, cords and power points, as well as their proper use are important factors in eliminating electrical hazards in the Office and Business Industry.

More About General Electrical Safety Precautions

Other Hazards

At any time, other hazards that may be encountered in the Office and Business Industry include:

office noise;
slipping, tripping, stumbling, falling, bumping;
photocopier emissions and noise;
poor ventilation; and
lack of training in correct safety procedures.