Regardless of the industry’s size or nature, safety in the workplace is a primary concern for most managers and supervisors. As such, managers need to promote policies that ensure the safety of every worker.
With that said, the reality is that some industries are inherently dangerous compared to others. For instance, an employee working in a warehouse, where the environment encompasses pallets, heavy machinery, and racking, is at a higher risk of injury than an employee in a typical office setup. This is why warehouse safety is essential.
In light of the above, below are tips to help you achieve optimum employee safety in your warehouse.
Understanding hazards innate in a warehouse
The first step in fostering warehouse safety is by understanding the common injuries likely to occur in a warehouse and what is causing them. Typically, the following are the most common causes of accidents in a warehouse.
• Machinery related accidents: Heavy machinery like forklifts are the leading causes of injuries and even fatalities in a warehouse. Employees run a risk of being knocked or falling from forklifts and trailers.
• Slips, falls, and trips
• Being hit by falling objects
• Exposure to dangerous chemicals
• Machine entanglement
• Injuries from manual material handling
Training to your safety
Training and retraining inform and remind workers of safety precautions they need to observe to promote a safe working environment. As a manager, you can devise numerous ways to conduct training. You can use instruction videos, texts, face to face training, drills, role-plays, and safety experts.
Ultimately, use any training method you deem sufficient. However, the training goal is to ensure that employees know safety protocols and know the procedure for reporting potential safety hazards. Also, ensure that the training information is up to date because safety practices and protocols change often.
Proper signage
Signs and stickers are one of the most cost-effective safety practices. Install signage to caution employees of potentially hazardous locations. More so, use signs to label emergency exits, extinguishers, first aid location, and eye wash stations.
Provide appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE)
Loose-fitting clothing should be avoided to avoid entanglement with machinery, pallets, and other objects. Instead, provide appropriate PPE, such as gloves, helmets, eye-wear, and masks to protect employees from warehouse-related injuries.
Ensure safety equipment is used
Always ensure that workers use machineries like forklifts and hand trucks to lift heavy loads. This way, back-related injuries, and strains are avoided. However, ensure that all equipment is handled by adequately trained staff.
Additionally, ensure the equipment used is frequently serviced to eliminate safety concerns from faulty equipment.
Observe tidiness
Eliminate potential saf
ety hazards like a wet floor that can lead to slips and falls. Again, dispose of any clutter, debris, and stray cords, which can cause damage to employees and equipment. For trash cans, ensure they are emptied before they fill to the brim.
Vehicle safety
Whether you are handling truck lifts or forklifts, vehicle safety is mandatory to avoid accidents. Train your employees to observe the marked traffic signage like speed limits. Additionally, train the drivers to avoid reversing whenever possible and be aware of blind spots. Ultimately, enforce zero-tolerance to reckless driving.
Improve ventilation
Proper ventilation is, perhaps, one of the most overlooked safety practices in a warehouse. Warehouses with restricted air circulation promote the clogging of exhaust fumes, affecting the respiratory organs of workers.
Beyond installing air vents, you can improve air circulation by putting fans.
Final word
Beyond employees’ wellbeing, factors like legal requirements and loss of productivity should make you take employee safety in the workplace seriously.
While you can’t eliminate warehouse injuries 100 percent, devising the above tips and cultivating a safety-conscious mindset among workers can significantly reduce warehouse-related injuries.
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