Team Lifting: A Special Case with Special Rules

When two or more workers move a load together, the risk of accidents and injuries increases. To protect workers involved in team lifting, you need to teach them some special lifting rules that ensure everyone involved lifts and moves together as a unit.

Here are those rules, courtesy of the team lifting safety meeting in BLR’s  Safety Meetings Library:

• Plan the lift. One person should take responsibility for giving the orders to lift, turn, and set down. But everybody has to understand what needs to be done before getting started so that the lift goes smoothly.
• Lift and lower in the same manner. Each worker should follow the same safe lifting technique:
  1. Squat down close to the load,
  2. Get a firm grip,
  3. Keep his or her back straight, and
  4. Lift slowly, powering the lift with leg muscles not back muscles.
• Move slowly and evenly. The load should be carried without sudden starts or stops. And all workers should watch where they’re going.

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Whatever safety meeting you need, chances are you’ll find it prewritten and ready to use in BLR’s Safety Meetings Library on CD. Try it at no cost or risk. Here’s how.

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• Keep the load level and the weight evenly distributed. Workers should be especially careful when going down inclines.
• Carry long loads on the same shoulder. Each team member should carry a long load, like pipes or boards, on the same shoulder. If the object is rigid, they should walk in step. But if the load is flexible, walking out of step is the best way, since this will keep flexible objects from bouncing.
• Avoid walking backwards. If it’s absolutely necessary, make sure the path is clear, and have an extra team member to guide the move.

Team Lifting No-No’s

Make sure team lifters understand that they should not:

• Twist their bodies when lifting or carrying,
• Lift from one knee,
• Change their grip while holding the load, or
• Step over objects when moving the load.

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We challenge you to NOT find a safety meeting you need, already prewritten, in BLR’s Safety Meetings Library. Take up our challenge at no cost or risk. Get the details.

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Safety Meetings Galore

BLR’s Safety Meetings Library provides the perfect information for conducting frequent and engaging training on safe lifting to prevent back injuries—whether it’s team or individual lifts. This cost-effective resource provides a complete meeting outline for each safety topic, as well as supporting handouts, quizzes, posters, and safety slogans.

All told, the Safety Meetings Library CD provides you with more than        400 ready-to-train meetings on more than 100 key safety topics—a shrewd investment in this time of tight budgets. In addition to the meetings’ supplemental quizzes and handouts, you also get relevant regulations (OSHA’s CFR 29), a listing of the most common safety violations cited by OSHA, and case studies of actual OSHA cases and their outcomes.

Safety Meetings Library lets you choose from a variety of training approaches, including:

• Mandatory—Sessions that are OSHA-required
• Comprehensive—Sessions with broadest coverage of a topic
• 7-Minute—Short, simple, targeted sessions to fit tight schedules
• Initial—A session used as introductory training on a topic
• Refresher—Sessions that follow up on or reinforce previous training
• Tool Box Talk—More informal reinforcement of a topic
• PowerPoint^®—Graphic presentations for comprehensive initial or refresher training
• Hands-on—A session in which there are training activities
• Spanish—Including Spanish language handouts and quizzes coordinated with English sessions

You can get a preview of the program by using the links below. But for the best look, we suggest a no-cost, no-obligation trial. Just let us know and we’ll arrange it for you.

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