Reducing Manual Handling Injuries in Food Operations: What Works in Practice

Most food operations already know manual handling injuries are common. What’s harder to confront is that many core processes are still designed in ways that keep physical exposure high shift after shift — even when everyone is trying to do the right thing.

Márquez-Gómez et al. describe food, packaging, and meat work as structurally high-exposure activities. Routine tasks often combine heavy loads, high repetition and awkward postures, which creates sustained physical loading across shifts.

Márquez-Gómez et al. include cold environments within the risk profile for food and meat processing work. HSE also recognises temperature as a relevant factor in managing musculoskeletal risk. In practice, cold conditions can increase overall physical demand where tasks remain repetitive and paced.

In most food and drink operations, pace is the primary control that shapes exposure. When output targets are tight and downtime is costly, the line rate becomes the organising principle for everything else, including manual handling.

People skip micro-pauses, they take the shortest physical route rather than the safest one, and they keep handling moving because any pause is immediately visible in throughput.

The cumulative effect is more repetition and less recovery time across the shift, particularly where the process has little built-in slack for jams, short stops, or product variation.

The research consistently associates high pace and line speed with higher exposure in food and meat processing, but the practical point for managers is simple. If the production system does not make recovery possible, the injury rate will not move reliably, regardless of what is written into the task design.

Underreporting is rarely about people being indifferent. In high-pressure environments, it is often a rational response to how the organisation reacts to disruption. What we commonly see is that early symptoms are treated as something to work through.

People self-manage with painkillers, they rotate informally with colleagues, or they avoid drawing attention because they do not want to be seen as unable to cope, particularly where work is insecure or overtime is needed.

Supervisors also face a trade-off. If they escalate every early symptom, the immediate impact is resourcing and output risk, so issues get managed locally and quietly. The operational consequence is that organisations lose early signals about which tasks are generating harmful exposure, and the first time it becomes visible is when someone cannot complete the shift or a claim is raised.

At that point, the window for straightforward redesign has often passed and the same high-exposure pattern continues in the meantime.

Even with good training, you are unlikely to see a meaningful reduction in low back pain if the physical demands of the work stay the same.

Training is still necessary, and employers must provide suitable manual handling training under UK health and safety law.

When done well, it helps people recognise higher-risk handling, understand the site standard for how tasks should be performed, and use handling aids correctly and consistently.

Verbeek et al. found no clear evidence that manual handling training reduces low back pain, even when combined with handling aids, compared with no intervention or alternative interventions.

This is because awareness does not change the job’s physical demands. Exposure remains when work still involves the following.

• High physical effort
• Repetition
• Awkward postures
• Time pressure

In day-to-day operations, this shows up when the process still requires materials and containers to be handled at pace in tight spaces, with repeated reaches and turns. In those conditions, even well-delivered training cannot remove the underlying exposure.

This is why training works best when it supports task controls. It has more impact when handling aids are available and usable, agreed ways of working still fit the production line, and tasks are reviewed when conditions change.

In food and drink environments, the most effective controls are those that change the task and work conditions, rather than relying on individuals to improve lifting technique.

Redesign aims to reduce bending, reaching, twisting, and poor handling heights, particularly in repetitive tasks. HSE’s food-and-drink case studies offer practical examples, such as improving workstation height and reach and reducing awkward handling through better task design.

• Set work so most handling stays between knee and shoulder height, covering pallets, shelving, benches, and feed points.
• Reduce long reaches by bringing the product closer to the operator and by improving how items arrive and leave the station.
• Improve the stability and handling of loads, for example, by better container or trolley design that reduces awkward postures and forces.

Where forces are high or handling is frequent, controls are most effective when they mechanise the move or support the load. HSE recommends using the following handling aids:

• Vacuum lifters for sacks, boxes, and repetitive lifts
• Conveyors and transfer systems to reduce carrying and repeated pick-and-place
• Bulk handling options where they replace manual movement
• Lift tables and height-adjustable devices to keep loads in a safer handling zone
• Better trolley and rack design, plus powered tugs where push and pull demands are high

EU-OSHA’s guidance emphasises a “system view” of manual handling risk. This means the way work is laid out and organised influences exposure to factors such as reach, posture, repetition, and force across a shift.

• Shorten travel distances and avoid unnecessary double-handling.
• Reduce tight turns, pinch points, and awkward manoeuvres that increase push and pull force.
• Place drop zones and pick points so workers can face the task, rather than twisting to place or retrieve goods.

Work organisation can help manage exposure, but it works best when it genuinely changes the physical demands, rather than rotating between tasks that strain the same joints.

Evidence reviews in high-risk processing environments highlight interventions aimed at reducing repetition and force, improving tool design, adjusting pace and rotation, and using engineering controls.

EU-OSHA also reinforces that manual handling risk is driven by exposure and work organisation, not technique alone.

• Rotate between tasks with clearly different postures and forces, not several high-repetition tasks loading the same joints.
• Build recovery time into work design, using task switching, planned breaks, and practical pacing.
• Where practicable, adjust pace and workflow to reduce continuous high-repetition exposure.

Participatory ergonomics, which involves workers in identifying problems and trialling changes, is widely recommended. The evidence base is mixed, but it is strong enough to describe it as often effective when properly implemented, particularly when it leads to real task and workstation changes.

• Involve operators and supervisors in identifying high-risk steps and testing handling aids and layout adjustments.
• Run short trials, capture feedback promptly, and assign a named owner for each change.

Manual handling injuries can persist even when tasks appear unchanged. In practice, that usually means the process still requires high physical effort, high repetition, awkward postures, or sustained time pressure, and those exposures rise and fall with staffing, demand, layout constraints and line performance. Training remains important, but it delivers value mainly when it reflects real work and reinforces the controls that shape exposure on the floor.

The most reliable improvements come when learning is built into how work is planned, supervised and reviewed, not treated as a one-off event. That means clear task controls, a realistic production rhythm that allows them to be used, and routine checks that confirm work is staying within agreed limits as conditions change.

Human Focus can support organisations to connect learning with risk assessment and task design, and to strengthen reinforcement through supervisor coaching, assurance activity and structured review as processes, layouts and equipment evolve.

Where training is needed, it tends to work best when it is anchored in the actual handling tasks people perform on site and aligned with local controls and constraints. Human Focus can develop bespoke task-specific learning based on real work in processing, packing, warehousing and distribution, so competence supports the way exposure is intended to be managed in day-to-day operations.

Recent advances in ergonomics video analysis and task analysis tools make it easier for organisations to understand how manual handling tasks are actually carried out across a shift. Used properly, manual handling ergonomics video analysis allows posture, movement, reach and repetition to be reviewed in real operating conditions, rather than relying solely on written task descriptions or occasional observation.

When integrated into routine reviews, ergonomics video analysis can also support practical feedback with employees and supervisors. It provides a shared view of how manual handling tasks change under pressure, where exposure increases, and whether agreed controls are holding up as pace, staffing or product mix vary. This helps ground learning and supervision in real work, rather than assumptions about how tasks are expected to run.

Human Focus supports organisations with AI-assisted manual handling ergonomics video analysis designed to sit alongside existing risk assessment and assurance processes. The intent is to strengthen visibility of exposure patterns and support informed review as conditions change, not to replace professional judgement or existing controls.

Where training is required, it is most effective when it reflects how tasks are intended to be carried out after improvements have been made. Digital tools now make it easier to link ergonomics task analysis directly to learning, using real manual handling task footage to reinforce agreed methods, constraints and controls.

This allows training to move beyond generic manual handling principles and into task-specific guidance that reflects local layouts, equipment, pace and handling aids. Ergonomics video content can support onboarding, refreshers and supervisor coaching, helping people understand both how tasks should be done and why they have been designed that way.

Human Focus also provides online content authoring to support task-specific learning, enabling organisations to maintain training that stays aligned with real work as tasks, layouts and processes evolve.