How to do a manual handling risk assessment in New Zealand

Gordon Findlay • Published 15 July 2026

Manual handling is behind a large share of workplace injury in New Zealand. Strains and sprains are the single biggest cause of work injury, and most of them come from lifting, carrying, pushing, pulling and repetitive tasks. ACC put the cost of workplace injury at around $2 billion in lost productivity in 2025, alongside 4.7 million days of weekly compensation. A manual handling risk assessment is how you get ahead of that: you look at the physical tasks your people do, work out which ones are risky, and change them before someone gets hurt.

This guide walks through how to do that in a New Zealand setting, in the order that actually works. It is written for employers, managers and health and safety reps who need a practical process, not a textbook.

What a manual handling risk assessment actually is

A manual handling risk assessment is the process of looking at a physical task and judging how likely it is to cause a musculoskeletal injury, then deciding what needs to change to make it safer. WorkSafe New Zealand calls the risky ones hazardous manual tasks: tasks that involve lifting, lowering, carrying, pushing, pulling, holding or restraining, where the force, posture, movement, repetition or duration creates a real chance of harm. The assessment is not a single form. It is a short sequence: identify the tasks, screen each one, assess the ones that need a closer look, then control the risk.

Start with the law: the duty you are meeting

In New Zealand, managing manual handling risk is not optional. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 and the General Risk and Workplace Management Regulations 2016, a business (a PCBU) has to identify its risks and either eliminate them or, where that is not reasonably practicable, minimise them. Musculoskeletal injury from hazardous manual tasks is one of those risks. The Act does not prescribe a particular assessment form, so doing the assessment is how you show you have identified the risk and managed it. If an incident happened tomorrow, the assessment is the evidence that you looked, understood, and acted.

Step 1: Identify the hazardous manual tasks

Before you can assess anything, list the physical tasks your people actually do. Walk the floor, watch the work, and ask the people doing it, because they know where the awkward lifts and the long repetitive jobs are. Pay attention to tasks that involve heavy or awkward loads, repeated movements, sustained or awkward postures, high force, or long duration. Do not forget the tasks that look routine, such as stacking, order picking, pushing trolleys and cages, or working at a bench all day, because volume and repetition do as much harm as one heavy lift.

Step 2: Screen each task

You do not need a full assessment for every task, and trying to do one would bury you. The efficient move is to screen first. WorkSafe provides five screening tools, one for each common task type: lifting and lowering, carrying, pushing and pulling, manual handling while seated, and repetitive upper-limb work. A screen is quick, and its job is to sort tasks into two groups: the lower-risk ones you can note and move on from, and the ones that need a proper assessment.

This is the fastest way to cover a lot of ground. Our free Manual Task Risk Check runs these WorkSafe screens for you: you answer a few plain questions about a task and it returns a result in about two minutes, telling you whether the task is lower risk or needs a closer look. It is a practical first step before you commit time to a detailed assessment, and it gives you a record of what you checked.

Step 3: Do a detailed assessment where the screen flags a task

For any task the screen flags, WorkSafe provides more detailed risk assessment methods that score the task properly. The three main ones are the New Zealand Manual Handling Assessment Charts (NZMAC) for lifting, lowering and carrying, the New Zealand Risk Assessment of Pushing and Pulling (NZRAPP), and the New Zealand Assessment of Repetitive Tasks (NZART) for repetitive upper-limb work. There is also a contributing factors checklist for seated handling and anything the other methods do not cover. Whichever method fits the task, you are weighing the same core factors:

• Load. How heavy or awkward the object is, and whether it is stable or hard to hold.
• Posture. Whether the work forces bending, twisting, reaching, or holding a fixed position.
• Force. How hard someone has to push, pull, grip or lift to get the task done.
• Movement and repetition. How often the movement is repeated and how fast the work is paced.
• Duration. How long the task lasts and how much recovery the person gets between efforts.
• Environment. Floor surfaces, obstacles, ramps, temperature, lighting and anything else that makes the task harder.

A detailed assessment gives each of these a rating, so you end up with a clear picture of which factors are driving the risk. That matters, because it tells you what to fix.

Step 4: Control the risk

Assessing a task changes nothing on its own. The point is to control the risk, and the law expects you to work down the hierarchy of controls rather than jump straight to telling people to lift carefully. Start at the top and only move down when a higher control is not reasonably practicable.

• Eliminate the task. The best control is not doing the hazardous handling at all, for example by delivering stock closer to the point of use or automating a step.
• Redesign or substitute. Change the task, the load or the layout: mechanical aids, trolleys and hoists, lighter or smaller loads, better bench heights, and shorter carry distances.
• Reduce it with organisation and equipment. Job rotation, team lifts, pacing, and the right gear reduce exposure where the task cannot be removed.
• Support it with training and supervision. Good technique, induction and supervision matter, but they sit near the bottom of the hierarchy. They support the higher controls; they do not replace them.

Training belongs in the mix, but it is the layer that reinforces the physical changes rather than the fix on its own. This is where workplace training from Capability Solutions earns its place, building the capability in your team to handle loads well and to keep the controls working on the floor.

Step 5: Record it, and review

Write down what you assessed, what you found, and what you changed. You do not need a heavy document, but you do need a record that shows the task, the risk, the controls, and the date. Then review it when something changes: a new task, new equipment, a near miss, or an injury. Manual handling risk is not a one-off exercise, because the work keeps moving and the assessment has to move with it.

Where most businesses come unstuck

Two things trip people up. The first is trying to formally assess everything at once, which stalls before it starts. Screening first solves that, because it tells you where to spend your time. The second is stopping at training, treating a manual handling course as the whole answer. Training is valuable, but if the heavy, awkward or repetitive task is unchanged, you have managed the paperwork and not the risk. Assess the task, change the task, and use training to hold the change in place.

Common questions

This article is general information about manual handling and health and safety duties in New Zealand and is not legal advice. Health and safety law and guidance can change. For your specific obligations, consult your health and safety adviser or refer to current WorkSafe New Zealand and MBIE guidance, including the WorkSafe manual task screening tools and risk assessment methods.