Health and Safety
Victorian WorkCover Authority statistics show that almost half of all injuries in the workplace are due to performing Manual Handling tasks.
Effects of these injuries:
- Pain and suffering of employees
- Loss of valuable staff members
- Claim payments totaling millions of dollars
Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, there is a duty placed on the Employer to protect the health and safety of employees while at work by providing and maintaining a working environment that is safe and without risks to health. Risks must be eliminated or reduced as far as is reasonable practicable to do so. Penalties for breaches of the Occupational Health & Safety Act 2004 are now $943,290 for companies and $188,658 for individuals.
Unfortunately, there are risks associated with some traditional methods of document archive storage. Many businesses and organizations store their document archives in traditional archive boxes. Paper archives can be very heavy. Full archive boxes can weigh 14 kilos and upwards.
Our staff members have visited hundreds of premises where staff are regularly expected to lift and move heavy archive boxes. Often lifting them down from high shelving, or even climbing ladders to get heavy archive boxes down from loft areas. This is against good O.H. & S. practice and could easily result in injury.
Shelving has been known to collapse under the weight of too many archive boxes. Finally, those of you experienced in lifting full archive boxes will have witnessed the bottoms give way causing the contents to fall to the floor, (hopefully not on the staff member's feet).
Here are some links to websites that contain information regarding manual handling of archive boxes and the asscociated dangers: