Employer and Employee Duties
Employer duties
Under section 8 of the 2005 Act the employer must provide a safe place of work, safe systems, safe equipment and competent staff; assess risks; provide information, instruction, training and supervision; consult employees; and provide PPE free of charge where needed. For manual handling this means avoiding the lift where possible, designing the task, selecting aids, training for the actual task and monitoring compliance.
Employee duties
Section 13 requires employees to take reasonable care for their own safety and that of others, cooperate with the employer, use equipment and PPE properly, attend training, and report defects, hazards and accidents. An employee should not use a damaged trolley or improvise a lift because 'it has always been done that way'.
Worked example
A worker notices a cracked handle on a pallet truck. The correct response is to stop using it, label or isolate it, and report it. The employer must arrange repair or replacement and check whether other trucks are affected. If the worker continued and was injured, both the failure to report and the failure to maintain could be examined - but the employer carries the primary duty to provide safe equipment.
Traps
Employees sometimes think the employer is responsible for everything. Employees have real duties too. Employers sometimes think a signed training record transfers responsibility to the worker; it does not. PPE is not a substitute for avoiding or engineering out the lift; it is the last resort.