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Reckitt Benckiser

employees awarded certificates in manual handling

December 2008 – In an effort to protect staff and to avoid injury through mishandling heavy loads, 60 employees from Reckitt Benckiser’s Hull-based healthcare office this month received qualifications from another local business, SHEilds Training & Consultancy Services Ltd.(STCS), in CIEH Principles of Manual Handling. More than a third of all over-three-day reported injuries each year are caused by manual handling, with surveys of self-reported work-related illness estimating that 1.1 million people in Great Britain suffered from musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) caused or made worse by their current or past work.

Click the thumbnail to download A short guide to Manual Handling

The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) qualification is designed to introduce candidates to the hazards and risks involved in manual handling and outlines what to expect from a manual handling assessment. The presentation of the certificates marks the first time that the two companies have worked together, as Reckitt Benckiser joins the large number of business that carry out manual handling training with STCS. X% of the healthcare company’s Hull-based employeescertificates. received the

Paul Bell, Managing Director of STCS, commented:

“We are delighted to be working with Reckitt Benckiser. As such an influential local business, it is reassuring to know that it takes the safety of its employees seriously. Training staff members in CIEH qualifications is a positive first step to reducing the occurrence of workplace accidents.”

Rachel Pearson, Training Coordinator at Reckitt Benckiser, said:

“The 60 employees who carried out the CIEH Principles of Manual Handling training with SHEilds have learnt a great deal from the course in terms of how to protect themselves from potential back injuries when lifting heavy items. As a leading consumer goods company, where day to day work often involves lots of lifting and carrying, health and safety training is especially important for Reckitt Benckiser employees.”

If you would like further information on how your business or you as an individual can benefit from Health and Safety training, please use our contact form call us on +44(0)1482 806805

CIEH The need for workplace safety

When operating a food business of any type and size it can be all too easy to focus only upon Food Hygiene and the safety of the product, understandable perhaps when the amount of investment that will have been used to create a food safe environment with all of the attendant systems and procedures; but has the safety of employees been overlooked on the mission for food safety excellence.

Manufacturing injuries in the Food & Drink Industry

A quarter of all manufacturing injuries still occur in the food industry. In the ten year period April 1997 to March 2007 over 94,000 workers in the food and drink industries suffered an injury reportable to HSE and there were 37 fatal injuries (excluding contractors). The combined injury rate for food and drink industries is among the highest of manufacturing injury rates. Indeed the injury rate is 1.6 times the average for manufacturing industries generally and is 1.8 times that of the construction industry.

The main causes of injury continue to be:

• manual handling/musculoskeletal injury
• slips on wet or food contaminated floors
• falls from height
• workplace transport, Fork Lift Trucks (FLTs)
• struck by something (e.g. sharp knives or falling objects)
• machinery

So What are the Primary Causes of Fatal Injuries?

Of these, the main causes of fatal injury continue to be workplace transport (including FLTs), falls from height and machinery.

The main causes of occupational ill health continue to be:

• musculoskeletal injuries
• dermatitis
• noise
• occupational asthma
• rhinitis
• work related stress

Ref HSE website.

Diversity of the Food and Drink Manufacturing Industry & Workplace Health and Safety

When the diversity and type of food and drink manufacturing is considered it is easy to see the potential for this level of injuries, and then also consider the logistics of moving product from one location to another and delivery to customer the situation takes on a greater level of enormity.
So, despite marginal net profits the food manufacturing business is faced with a further challenge to improve upon health and safety in the workplace (more…)