The maintenance of a large country estate was carried out by teams of people working in remote locations. The demanding nature of the work, often in adverse weather, was giving rise to manual handling accidents and there was a high sickness absence rate.
To tackle these problems, risk assessments of each of the major work activities were made. Changes to ways of working were identified to improve health, safety and efficiency. For example:
Following these changes there has been a 20% reduction in time off due to musculoskeletal disorders. Use of contractors has also proved cheaper than using estate staff for specialist tasks. The payback period for these changes was less than 9 months.
