Forklift Responsibilities for Business Owners

If you own a business and have a forklift on site, you probably know you have specific duties as an employer. And you probably know the reason why Worksafe Victoria have made strict rules regarding employer duties is because forklifts have the potential of causing death and serious injury. Failure to do so can mean heavy penalties.

So now you may be wondering what are the specific duties you have as an employer when you have a forklift on site. Well, there are some very important ones. So whenever a forklift is used in your workplace, here’s a few issues you need to make sure of.

1. While you are operating a forklift, you need to make sure that the operating of the forklift does not impact on the safety of others. Now you may be wondering who others include. Well, pedestrians are definitely in the group of people you have a duty towards. That means if you are going to be sharing the road or footpath with them, then you need to make sure that it does not impact their safety. Therefore, safety is necessary whenever people are around.

2. As an employer, where you have a forklift in operation, you will also need to make sure that the lifting attachments are appropriate for the load. As you rightly know, having the wrong lift attachments can cause serious injury or even death to workers. Therefore, you have a responsibility to everyone in your workplace to check to see that the lifting attachments is exactly what is required for the load. If it’s not, then you know that you got to do something about it immediately.

3. One very important responsibility you have as an employer is to make sure the weight of the load is known. And it is within the safe working limits of the forklift. You probably know this is important because serious injury or even death can occur where the load is over the safe working limits of the forklift. So make sure your staff know this.

4. As you are aware, when your forklift operators are working, they need to make sure that the load remains under control while being lifted or suspended. Failure to do so could cause injury to staff and others.

Anyway, these are just some of the issues you, as an employer need to be aware of when a forklift is in operation. There are others. So you’ll need to make sure of these as well.