Manual lifting is a regular part of many people’s work day. There are all kinds of jobs that involve a lot of lifting tasks. This includes many jobs in the retail, healthcare and manufacturing industries.

Now, in addition to being a very common workplace task, lifting also can have its dangers for workers. There are circumstances in which lifting could pose injury risks to workers, including musculoskeletal injury risks.

Now, there are measures workers can take to try to reduce their likelihood of getting hurt while lifting at work. Recently, a federal agency has made a new tool available that is aimed at providing workers ready access to guidance on this topic right on their phone.

The agency in question is The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The new tool it has released is a free mobile app called NLE Calc. The app allows workers to enter in data on a load they are planning to lift. It then uses the entered data to give a safety score to the load. The score is aimed at giving a worker an idea of what level of injury risk would be present in connection to lifting the load. The app also offers workers safety recommendations on lifting a load.

As this illustrates, workplace safety awareness is one of the many areas mobile apps are entering into. One wonders if there will be substantial growth in the number and functions of workplace safety apps here in the U.S. in upcoming years. If there is, one wonders what impacts it will have on the quality of safety resources workers have ready access to when performing work tasks, such as lifting tasks.

There are many contexts in which what resources a worker has available to them can matter greater. When on the job, what safety resources a worker has access to can have impacts on their overall safety. In the aftermath of being hurt on the job, such as suffering a lifting injury, what financial resources a worker has available can impact their efforts to cope with and recover from the effects of their injury. Among the things that can impact what such resources are present for a hurt worker is how workers’ comp matters go for the worker. Given how impactful such matters can be, hurt workers may want a skilled lawyer’s help with the various issues related to pursuing a workers’ compensation claim.

Source

EHS Today, “NIOSH Releases App for Worker Safety While Lifting,” Stefanie Valentic, Aug. 24, 2017