Manual Handling for Leaders is online manual handling training for New Zealand supervisors, team leaders and health and safety reps. Manual handling is one of the biggest sources of injury in New Zealand workplaces, and your frontline leaders are the people best placed to prevent it. Teaching staff to lift well matters, but the bigger wins come from leaders who can spot a risky task and redesign it so the dangerous lift barely happens at all. This manual handling course gives supervisors and team leaders the skills to assess the work, control the risk, and verify that their people are safe, anywhere in NZ.
Who is this course for?
Manual Handling for Leaders is for supervisors, team leaders and health and safety representatives who plan work and lead others. If you decide how a task is set up, who does it, and what good looks like, this course is written for you. It suits new supervisors building their health and safety confidence and experienced leaders who want a consistent way to assess and sign off manual handling across a team.
Read the work
Assess the whole task, not just the lift
Leaders learn to look past a heavy box and read the whole task, using the four risk types and a simple risk matrix to rate it with confidence. Once you can see where the risk really sits, you can decide what to change first instead of guessing.
Fix the job
Choose the strongest control
Good leaders reach for the strongest practical control first, not the easiest one. That often means designing the manual handling out of the task altogether. Tap each card for the hierarchy of controls applied to a real handling job, strongest first.
Tap or select a card to flip it.
Lift the team
Coach technique to a clear standard
Where manual handling stays in the job, leaders learn to coach it well: what good technique looks like, how to correct it on the floor without singling people out, and how to make the safe way the normal way. A standard everyone knows is a standard you can hold people to.
What the course covers
Six lessons take leaders from the law and the cost, through assessing and controlling risk, to leading safe handling on the floor:
- The cost and the lawHSWA 2015 and officer due diligence
- Assessing riskThe four risk types, TILE and the risk matrix
- Controlling riskThe hierarchy of controls, JSA and JSEA
- Designing risk outEngineering the manual handling out of the task
- Coaching safe techniqueCorrecting technique on the floor
- Observation and sign-offThe Manager Observation Record and incident response
Why train leaders
Teach a worker to lift and you protect one person. Teach a leader to redesign the task and you protect everyone who ever does it.
That is the difference between fixing one lift and fixing the job, and it is where the biggest injury reductions come from.
Close the loop
Sign it off with the Manager Observation Record
Leaders also carry the verification duty: it is not enough to send people on a course, someone has to confirm they can handle loads safely, and record it. The course teaches the Manager Observation Record so your supervisors can watch a real task, check it against the standard, and log competence, which is exactly what WorkSafe expects a business to be able to show.
Is this an NZQA qualification?
About NZQA: this is workplace training. It builds on the learning outcomes of NZQA Unit Standard 17459 and extends into leadership and risk management, so it covers the right things, but it is not connected to the New Zealand Qualifications and Credentials Framework, it is not an NZQA-registered assessment, and completing it does not award NZQA credits or a unit standard.
Enrol your leaders
$59 per person, NZD
Enrol one supervisor or your whole leadership team. Access is immediate, the lessons are self-paced, and leaders finish ready to assess tasks and sign off their people with the Manager Observation Record.
Enrol nowSelf-paced online · works on any phone, tablet or laptop
Common questions
How is this different from Manual Handling for Staff?
The staff course teaches the hands-on skills of lifting, carrying and using aids safely. This leaders course teaches how to manage the risk across a team: assessing tasks, choosing controls, designing the work better, coaching technique and signing people off. Many workplaces enrol leaders in both.
How long does it take?
It is self-paced and made of short lessons, so leaders can fit it around the job and return at any time. It works on a phone, tablet or laptop.
Do we get something for our health and safety records?
Yes. Leaders finish able to use the Manager Observation Record, which gives you a practical, repeatable record that each worker can handle loads safely.
Can we enrol our whole supervisory team?
Yes. The course is 59 dollars per person and you can enrol as many leaders as you need. Get in touch if you want to arrange a larger group.
Do you offer manual handling training for supervisors in New Zealand?
Yes. Manual Handling for Leaders is an online manual handling course for supervisors, team leaders and health and safety reps anywhere in New Zealand, aligned to NZ health and safety law and the learning outcomes of Unit Standard 17459.