With a background of having worked hands-on in heavy manual handling and high-risk industries Michael trained in occupational therapy (physical and psychologicaltraining), ergonomics and safety; then did research in workplace design and hazardous physical work injury prevention. With its genesis in the shearing research safety, sports and clinical team based at the
university of Ballarat (Federation University) Michael Lawrance and John Pryor formed a team in 2008 dedicated to improving MSD Prevention at work and called it JointAction.

The JointAction team now includes leading medical, insurance, safety, sports and clinical expertise.

Michael Lawrance & Associates approaches physical ergonomics from experience of hard physical work coupled with thorough professional training in clinical and sports physical injury prevention, recovery and performance.

We use an approach which identifies and manages physical ergonomic risks as close to their source as possible. This means applying proper management systems, engineering solutions and knowledge & skills development for workforce and management. Our risk identification and scoring system allows the ranking of MSD risk alongside other WHS risk.

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Our starting point is that physical work can be healthy or unhealthy, hazardous or healing. We teach organisations to identify this difference then to enhance the healthy and eliminate or manage the hazardous work.

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Much general WHS effort in addressing hazardous manual handling is misdirected due to insufficient differentiation between healthy physical work  and harmful physical work.

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Michael Lawrance & Associates has developed significant expertise in and a focus on work related Musculo-Skeletal Disorder (WMSD) prevention. This is increasingly recognised as a specialist area of occupational injury prevention.

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Physical ergonomic services are delivered nationally.