Working together to raise Manual Handling Training Standards for Plasterboard Workers across Australasia

Background

Gypsum Board Manufacturers of Australasia (GBMA) is a plasterboard industry association that includes members from CSR, Boral, Lafarge, BGC and Winstone Wallboards (New Zealand).

The most common injury for plasterboard workers are manual handling.

In order to systemize plasterboard manual handling tasks across the industry and reduce injuries, GBMA wanted to collaboratively produce an industry specific manual handling video withcomplementary training materials.

In order to do this, they needed a clear and concise training video with medical animations to clearly educate 3,000 plasterboard workers on how to correctly handle plasterboard materials. A trainer’s manual and employee handbook with assessment questionnaires, as well as posters were also required.

Here’s how we solved the problem:

GBMA needed training materials that would be able to withstand extreme scrutiny, so they needed to be made at the highest level possible.

1. Digicast collated training materials from all five member companies and wrote a script that would meet all OHS and company requirements. The input from many safety committee meetings were taken onboard to ensure applicability to all five companies.
2. During the shoot, a physiotherapist was present to ensure that all 15 manual handling tasks were undertaken correctly. Every shot was carefully planned so that workers could clearly understand what to do.
3. Still photos were also taken for display in the employee’s handbook.
4. Medical animations were also created and checked by the physiotherapist to ensure that they correctly showed how the body works.
5. An iconic plasterboard dude was designed to be incorporated into all of the training materials such as the handbooks, video and posters.

And here’s what happened:

To date, the manual handling training video has been shown to 3,000 people. Due to its high quality, it is also being rolled out to construction and manufacturing industries to highlight manual handling risks to these workers involved with plasterboard.

The training materials have filled a significant need within the plasterboard industry with member companies already finding that it is a vast improvement on previous training materials.