Armature animation - Lock hands to object?

Hi all,
I’m working on a short animation of two men carrying a big and heavy object.
my question is, is it possible to lock the character’s hands to the big and heavy object so I won’t have to worry about
the location of the hands while keyframing the characters.
Now, due to my very tight schedule, (hmm…should be ready by tomorrow morning) I can’t do a proper digging.
So, if anyone can point me to the right direction i would be greatly thankful.

This can be done by using IK controls on the hands/arms, then “pinning” the IK targets to specific places on the item being lifted using a constraint like Copy Location. This video shows an example:Clean & Jerk

The bucket in the first part of my showreel, and the tugging of the art card at the end, were also done in this manner:

There is often some “slippage,” though, depending on how the action is set up, so you may have to manually tweak some frames.