The Six Pack that changed your working life
Whether it’s your office desk or workplace environment, the protective clothing you might have to wear, or the heavy objects you have to lift and move, regulations implemented 20 years ago have led to better workplaces for all.
On 1st January 1993, the UK implemented six wide-ranging Regulations under the Health & Safety at Work etc., Act 1974. The initial Act had outlined what all employers should be doing to provide a safe environment for their workers almost 20 years previously, but the reality was that many workplaces still had shortcomings. Dubbed the ‘Six Pack’, they gave more detail and guidance to help employers meet these requirements.
They also represented the UK’s interpretation of a set of European Directives designed to protect workers across Europe. They set a minimum standard so that companies within the EU could not capitalise on cost savings by disregarding health and safety practices in their workplaces.
The original EC Directive (89/391/EEC) contained ergonomics at its heart. Article 6 (General obligations on employers) section 2 paragraph (d) put requirements on employers:
“when adapting the work to the individual, especially as regards the design of work places, the choice of work equipment and the choice of working and production methods, with a view, in particular, to alleviating monotonous work and work at a predetermined work-rate and to reducing their effect on health.”
Therefore, the onus was on the employers to comply but to be able to do this, companies needed to seek professional guidance and this came to include ergonomists. As defined by the International Ergonomics Association, the role of the ergonomists should be to: “contribute to the planning, design and evaluation of tasks, jobs, products, organisations, environments and systems in order to make them compatible with the needs, abilities and limitations of people.”
The introduction of the Six Pack regulations irrevocably changed the development and practice of ergonomics and has led to much wider understanding and recognition by employers as to the contribution that ergonomics can make in creating safer, more productive workplaces.
The Six Pack consists of:
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (updated 1999): the over-arching regulations which apply to all employers whatever the work done or risks involved. They spell out how health & safety should be managed systematically and methodically.
- Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations: they outline minimum legal standards for a wide range of health, safety and welfare issues in the workplace. e.g if there could be a risk of people slipping on a floor, employers had to think about the type of flooring and way it was cleaned to reduce the risk. Initially, these regulations included a duty to protect workers from falling or being injured by falling objects. In 2005, a separate set of regulations, the Work at Height Regulations, were introduced to cover this.
- Manual Handling Operations Regulations: these apply to all manual handing work which involves lifting or moving a load by hand or bodily force, whether scanning goods at a check-out, pushing or pulling roll cages or handling sacks of cement on a building site.
- Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations: these apply to computers, process control room screens in factories and CCTV screens. Employees using DSE equipment for more than two hours a day must have regular DSE assessments to ensure that their workstations are set up correctly so that they can work comfortably and are not put at risk.
- Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations (updated 1998): their aim is to make sure that any work equipment is suitable for the job and does not cause health & safety problems. Poor maintenance, inadequate guarding on machinery or using the wrong piece of equipment can all put workers at risk.
- Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations: PPE has to be provided when there is no better way of controlling risk. It includes all forms of PPE including respiratory protection, hearing protection, safety shoes, goggles and protective clothing.
Since the introduction of the Six Pack, there have been some major changes in the workplace presenting challenges for the future. The fact that so many people now use laptops instead of computers and together with mobile phones, tablets and other portable devices, their use pose new risks to individuals’ health. Hot desking and obesity are also factors that will need to be taken into account and will pose challenges to ergonomists/human factor professionals in the future.
Read further views of some of our members below.
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