If your business operates a warehouse, safety is of paramount importance. These tips will reduce injury and increase productivity.
As an employer, it’s a nightmare to face any injury that occurs in the workplace. It can often result in needing to claim on insurance and not to mention, it may put reputational strain as well as strain on workplace relationships.
With that being said, it’s important to find ways of improving safety in your business for the sake of your employees. For warehouses, these working environments will often have more risks attached to them, which is why it’s important to find ways of improving the safety of these environments in particular.
If you’re looking to improve warehouse safety for employees, here are some tips on how to do it.
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Common workplace injuries
What are some common workplace injuries that you would expect to encounter as a business owner?
Slips, trips, and falls
This type of injury is often an accident or a misstep made by the employee. However, what’s lying around in the middle of a workplace floor is not always the fault of the person who has had the accident.
This is probably one of the most common forms of injury in the workplace, not limited to certain work sites or environments.
Being hit by a falling object
Again, falling objects are a common occurrence in many different work environments and can be considered more damaging because they’re falling and hitting staff from a height. Not only that but a falling object that hits a person’s head is likely going to cause more damage too.
Injuries involving machinery
Lastly, one of the main causes of injury, especially when it comes to warehouse environments is injuries that involve machinery.
The transportation of goods and equipment used on production lines or within packaging facilities is hefty machinery. All of which are often quite dangerous if the user doesn’t know how to use it properly.
Tips to improve employee safety in your warehouses
Now that you know some of the common injuries that are found when it comes to the workplace, how can you prevent this as a business owner? The answer – pretty easily!
There are plenty of helpful tips to improve employee safety in your warehouses, so here are some useful improvements that you can make immediately.
Train your staff properly
First and foremost, don’t neglect proper onboarding for your staff. This is absolutely necessary, especially if you’re trying to avoid a potential lawsuit on your hands.
Training your staff to use the equipment properly and to work responsibly within the working environment is crucial to keeping everyone safe. Be proactive with any training required for each employee and be sure to personalize it depending on what equipment they’re operating.
Be sure to also update the training requirements that might be needed when new equipment or machinery is introduced or their training has become outdated.
Provide proper safety equipment and uniforms
Employees need to be wearing the proper safety equipment and uniforms in order to do their jobs safely. For the most part, that means no loose clothing that they could potentially trip on or get caught up in the machines they use.
Make sure you’re checking staff members regularly for this requirement and that all stations have the relevant safety equipment needed. If it’s missing, then it’s important to get it replaced immediately. You should also aim to encourage staff members to let senior members and supervisors know when safety equipment is missing.
Eliminate any potential hazards
There are often many potential hazards lying around the workplace, some of which, you might not even be aware of. Your building’s operation team should be hot on any hazards and fixing these or putting measures in place to prevent any injuries.
Of course, you can’t always catch these potential hazards but you can do the work to help put preventative measures in place. Keep a policy in place that encourages all staff members to report potential hazards and to ensure the ops team is taking rounds to make the necessary checks throughout the working day.
Make sure you’re doing everything to eliminate any potential hazards in the workplace where possible.
Improve line painting
The working environment can prove particularly dangerous if there are no clear pathways of where to go. Whether it’s employees coming onto the site or clients, it’s critical to have clear definitions of which way employees and guests should navigate throughout the warehouse.
A good way to do this is by introducing or improving line painting. These signs are useful indicators to help everyone find the direction of flow that is most beneficial and safe within the workplace.
You should learn more about the significance of warehouse line painting for safety and efficiency. Again, this should be something that your staff are also made aware of! That way, everyone knows what the lines mean.
Put up signage
Talking of signs, there’s a lot of signage that should be clearly displayed around the workplace. Depending on what type of business you run and what materials or machinery are used, it’s worthwhile ensuring all of the safety signs and policies are up and about the property.
If you’ve not got anyone who is an expert in health and safety available on-site at all times, then it might be worth bringing someone in to help. It would be useful to have an audit of the warehouse and look for vulnerabilities or gaps in your awareness of safety signage.
Every sign is important to display around the workplace because it shows as a company, that you’re doing everything in your due diligence to keep your employees safe in the workplace. If an injury or accident occurs, it will tell anyone prosecuting that you’ve done all you can to prevent said injuries.
Improve Warehouse Safety
As a company, it’s important that you’re doing everything you can to keep your staff members in check. With that being said, use these tips to keep them safe and to ensure that don’t become injured on workplace property.
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This is a contributed post.