Manual Handling in Shopfitting - All You Need to Know

What do you know about manual handling, and its safety implications?

Manual handling injuries and work-related musculoskeletal disorders were responsible for a staggering 2.73 million lost working days in 2022, accounting for a third of all workplace injuries. More specifically, last year, 27% of all work-related ill health was down to musculoskeletal disorders, many of which were caused by manual handling.

Below we’ve outlined some important information on manual handling, particularly within the shopfitting and interior fit-out industry, which our team have been working in over the last 15 years.

What does the law say?

Manual Handling is so significant that it has its own set of regulations – The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992. In the regulations, ‘manual handling operations’ are defined as any transporting or supporting of a load (including the lifting, putting down, pushing, pulling, carrying or moving) by hand or by bodily force.

The regulations require organisations to avoid manual handling where possible. They also say that if you cannot, you need to assess the task. When assessing the task, everything you need to consider is listed in the manual handling risk assessment. For all but the most simple of manual handling assessments, it is advisable to get some expert advice when carrying out the assessment, to ensure you’ve considered the task completely.

What do you need to do?

Manual handling is very important to the shopfitting industry, with every project involving an element of manual handling. This will range from moving sheet materials to bringing in bulky, often top or side heavy, finished furniture, such as cash desks or display units. Specialist trades, such as glaziers, tilers and structural steel installers, will also have their own manual handling tasks.

You will also need to consider moving items via hoists or goods lifts. Not only are the loads often heavy, they can be difficult, unbalanced or fragile and access routes are often a challenge.

The main things to consider

As an employer, you need to make sure any manual handling tasks, which could cause injury, are avoided. If you cannot avoid manual handling, then you need to carry out an assessment of the risk, with the aim of reducing the risk of injury as much as you can.

The acronym TILE is often used, reminding the assessor to consider:

Task – What does the lift look like? Is it reaching above the head, or far away from the body?
Individual – Is the person capable of carrying out the task? Special consideration should be given to younger workers, those with existing health conditions which could be made worse by manual handling and those who might reasonably be considered to be pregnant.
Load – Lots of materials are available in a maximum of a 25kg bag (as this is a number which comes up in HSE guidance on manual handling, although it doesn’t tell the whole story). However, there is more to managing the risks from manual handling than just ordering 25kg bags. The weight distribution of the load makes a huge difference to how easy the item is to carry. How easy it is to grip and keep hold of will also make a huge difference.
Environment – The place where the lift or moving is being carried out, also needs to be assessed. Is the floor slippery? Are there bends or tight corners you need to carry things around? Are there stairs which need to be navigated?

Generally, the best way to reduce the risk of injury is to provide manual handling aids. These come in many shapes and sizes, depending on the material being lifted and the route the material is travelling. However, you need to select the right equipment for the job.

What can help?

A full assessment will help you to decide the best course of action. However, in our experience the most widely used manual handling aids in shopfitting are:

Board trolleys – great for transporting sheet material through back of house corridors as the angle the board is carried, reduces the effective width. This makes moving boards from loading bays to your unit much easier
Pallet trucks or pump trucks – great for moving palletised items, such as tiles, bagged building materials and finished joinery items
Rubble trucks – reduce the need to carry dustbins around site or to the skip
Four wheel turntable trucks – used on site to bring deliveries in. They don’t have the same capacity as a pallet truck or board trolley, but are easier to push/pull thanks to the pneumatic tyres
Pipe racks – used on shopfitting sites to carry and store lengths of material, particularly stud and track used when drylining. The material can be easily pushed to a more convenient location, saving time, and reducing the risk of injury

All of the manual handling items above are readily available from shopfitting supply companies such as WF Supplies, who supply a large number of shopfitting and interior fit-out contractors.

Where can I get more help or advice?

The HSE have published almost endless guidance on manual handling, particularly the busy builder series of information leaflets which offer concise, easy to understand information on a host of construction topics. More links can be found at the bottom of this post under ‘Resources’.

If you need help complying with the Manual Handling regulations or wider health, safety and CDM advice, Saxon Safety can help you. We provide a health, safety and CDM advisory service to our clients, advising and helping them to comply with their duties under CDM 2015. We work with principal contractors on retail fit-out projects and understand the specific challenges faced by the industry (including the need to be flexible, fast moving and commercially aware). We can be a source of competent advice and assistance with templates and formatting, or we can take full ownership of the safety compliance of a project.

Here at Saxon Safety, we routinely carry out regular site inspections for principal contractors, across the UK. We focus on always getting buy-in from the site teams, ensuring they see the reasons why we have to work the way we do.

Get in touch for more information on manual handling in shopfitting today!

Navigating Manual Handling in Shopfitting

What does the law say?

What do you need to do?

The main things to consider

What can help?

Where can I get more help or advice?

Resources