AGWA March Topic of the Month: Musculoskeletal Injuries

AGWA 2026 Safety Calendar March Topic of the Month: Musculoskeletal Injuries

Published 5 March 2026

Safety

Musculoskeletal Injuries

AGWA Safety March topic of the month

This month's focus is Musculoskeletal Injuries

Musculoskeletal injuries, from manual handling tasks, make up a quarter of all workplace injuries, with back injuries among the most common, as workers often lift or carry heavy loads such as bulky glass sheets, often bend or twist or try and work in awkward locations and spaces.

Throughout March, we'll be sharing valuable resources and best practices to help you prevent and avoid musculoskeletal injuries in your workplace.

Look out for safety tips, toolbox talks, and other resources throughout the month. Go to our Safety Resources on the AGWA website to help you implement all these tips. There you will find many tools, including videos, to make these tasks easier.

Let's manage manual handling together and make sure that every worker gets to go home at the end of the workday!

Review Manual Handling Procedures

Remind your workers what is defined as a manual handling task

- Manual handling is any activity that involves lifting, lowering, pushing, pulling, carrying or otherwise moving, holding or restraining any object.

- This would include activities in the workshop such as loading and unloading glass and framing materials from trucks and containers, moving sheets of glass for cutting, stacking glass on and off A-frames.
- It also includes activities such as lifting heavy files in the office, moving furniture or equipment and delivery drivers handling components and glass.
- What other activities can you think of that would be classed as manual handling?

- PCBU Tip: talk to your workers about injuries that have occurred and review what could have been done differently to avoid them. Use this as a training exercise.

Regularly identify manual handling hazards.

- PCBU Tip: Look at injuries and incidents in your workplace as a starting point for your procedures and training.

Do you have procedures on how to prepare for a lift? Before workers move anything, they need to go through these 5 steps:

- 1. Assess the load: This means consider the weight, balance, size and shape, cleanliness, sharp edges and fragility of the load.
- 2. Plan the lift: Always consider the place you are picking up from, where the load will be placed, visualising the task (seeing what you will do in your mind), using protective clothing if needed and using mechanical aids or assistance. Avoid walking backwards.
- 3. Check the environment: Look around you and check for hazards such as obstacles, uneven surfaces, spills and poor lighting.
- 4. Employ good lifting techniques, especially if you aren’t using equipment:

- Tips: Always warm up muscles before you start
  - Always carry glass vertically
  - Get as close as possible to the load keeping your feet apart for balance
  - Bend your knees and hips and keep your back straight
  - Lower your body to the load and your head to concentrate on the lifting
  - Grip the load firmly with the palms of your hands not the fingers
  - Straighten your legs to lift the load, use your leg muscles not your back muscles
  - Move your feet to walk where you want to go, don’t twist your back
  - Don’t walk backwards

- 5. Place the load down following the same steps in reverse.

Are you using the right equipment?

- Use equipment to assist you, including hand and mechanical suckers, forklifts, cranes, hoists, trolleys

- PCBU Tip: Only allow workers to use mechanical equipment if they have been trained

- PPE: Everyone must wear correct PPE during a lift: Cut-rated gloves, long sleeved shirts, long pants, gauntlets, safety boots and glasses.

- Manual handling is any activity that involves lifting, lowering, pushing, pulling, carrying or otherwise moving, holding or restraining any object.

- PCBU Tip: talk to your workers about injuries that have occurred and review what could have been done differently to avoid them. Use this as a training exercise

Run regular training sessions on:

- How to prepare for and carry out a lift
- One and two person lifts
- Using mechanical aids
- Wearing the right PPE

Resources

AGWA Resources

Not sure where to start? AGWA has developed a number of resources for you to use. To find these, and all those listed in this post, go to the AGWA website (www.agwa.com.au) and go to Technical & Business and then to Safety Resources.

Toolbox Talk topic: Training on carrying out a lift

Always remind workers that safety is everyone’s business, and they responsible for their own safety as well as looking out for their mate’s.