I am looking for some advice on two seperate matters if someone could assist. I work for a logistics firm where our warehouse team and drivers do a lot of repetative manual handling activities. Our staff are starting to report 'twinges' 'tweeks' 'pulls' in various parts of their bodies. 90% of them carry on with their operational duties and the odd one will have a couple of weeks off with 'back pain.' Drivers are stating they have happened at outlets yet fail to report to our outlets - or they occur at night where there is no witnesses. We are struggling to reduce our IFR and RIDDOR rate due to these injuries, however no 'event' has taken place therefore we investigate what the employee was doing at the time and they always claim they were carrying out the safe system of work (we ask them to confirm/demonstrate what this is) Where do people stand on this? My second query is the 'over 7 day RIDDOR' - most of our employees work shifts, 4 on 4 off. If an employee has a week off sick due to an alleged industrial accident (4 days) and returns the following shift he has automatically had 8 days off therefore creating a reportable injury. The employee however may have been able to work on day 6 - would we still have to report this injury? I understand the importance of these regulations however we have a growing number of incidents where can neither prove or deny they have occured and was wondering how other H&S professionals dealt with these sorts of cases. Any advice would be grateful. Natalie

Personally, and I know I might get rolled eyes at this comment, but having been in a similar situation I implemented a 24 hrs reporting policy. This did mean to educate all employees, that even if a small incident that could have resulted in an injury, THEY MUST REPORT. No injury as a result = near miss report, if some days later the incident resulted in an incident exacerbates into an injury of some sort (I am thinking of a slip or sudden twist) then you will have details to hand. This discourages phantom reporting. There always has to be flexibility with this approach, a bit of common sense. A telephone reporting line available direct to employees is imperative to this approach. Key wording in the RIDDOR document is incapacitation " accidents which result in the incapacitation of a worker for more than seven days." - Again, re-visit your policy on sickness/absence reporting. I have tweaked this in the past to along the lines on "daily updates to line manager" or alike and a back to work interview as mandatory. Only you will know what will work in this instance, but hopefully this helps with communication. Many of the advise that you will get form this forum is based on personal experience, and description and answers are usually sparse, I don't expect everyone to agree, but the above has worked.

Hi Natalie With regards to the second question, I would ask the person if they wold have worked if overtaime had been available in their four days off, if the answer is yes record in accident investigatiion as they are then available for work I would look at what else they do outside of work as well, review manual handling training and get the supervisors out on the floor

Under RIDDOR it doesn't matter if he tells you he can work it is over 7 continuous days including weekends and days that you are not in work (days off).

Jarsmith, I don't disagree with you it never really matters in my line of work because if someone goes off they are normally away for a number of weeks. The two examples you give are not in 'injuries at work' I agree you should be able to contact an employee and ask when he will be available for work considering he is running into his last rest day of 4, but the regulations don't take this into consideration. I think if you asked the HSE inspector to put in writing that he agreed I think you might find that he refuses.