Integrating safety into every aspect of your warehouse and distribution centre operation

This will be my last column for Inside Logistics as I move on to another role. However, this space will continue to provide important safety tips for warehouse and distribution centres from the experts at WSPS.

As a safety professional specializing in warehouse and distribution for more than a decade, it has been an immense pleasure to promote safety and help ensure that workers make it home to their families without injury at the end of the day. Along the way, I’ve learned some important lessons about how safety professionals can ensure they are on top of their game and that safety messages are having the intended impact.

I’d like to share a few lessons with my fellow safety professionals who are dedicated to reducing incidents and injuries in warehouse and distribution centres.

Embrace continuous learning. Our learning never ends. In the field of occupational health and safety, technology is moving at a rapid pace. Safety professionals need to stay abreast of new and innovative approaches to solve complex business and safety issues.

I was recently in a manufacturing plant with a warehouse component that was having difficulty in attracting and retaining staff. Their plan is to automate some work processes to reduce the need for staff, including adopting autonomous mobile robots. The side benefit of this technology is that it will reduce repetitive tasks among the existing workers at the plant, which lead to pain, discomfort, exhaustion and potentially musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs).

This role includes carrying out research to purchase optimum equipment, developing a practical understanding of how the equipment will be used, determining all applicable written standards (starting with manufacturer’s recommendations), supporting adoption through communication and training and mitigating all new hazards that the equipment may introduce into the workplace. All of this involves continuous learning.

Talk to your greatest asset, your employees. Employees who perform the work have valuable insights to share on how to improve their work and make it safer. Tap into this knowledge by taking the time to talk to your workers, not just in a group setting, but one-on-one. Ask for their ideas. The message you are sending is that they are important and you want to hear from them. Take all their suggestions seriously and review them with your internal decision-makers. The exercise of soliciting ideas from employees will boost morale significantly, and as we all know, morale is linked to engagement and commitment.

If you do implement a specific suggestion, thank the employee again. If you don’t, also thank them and explain why their idea was not implemented. When you finally do make business improvements, including safety, you have already attained buy-in because workers were part of the change-management process.

Walk the talk. As a safety leader, it is of the utmost importance that you are authentic. In other words, your actions must match what you say. If you drive too fast in the parking lot, don’t wear high-visibility apparel, use cell phones near mobile equipment, or subtly convey the message that production is more important than safety, you lose all credibility. Workers may ignore your safety communications or training, thinking, “They don’t follow safety rules, so I guess it’s not important.” Safety leaders and management must not fall into this trap.

Make sure everyone walks the talk regarding safety, from the most senior person who signs the cheques to the person performing cleanup. Keep your safety culture strong.

Make safety relevant and engaging. A production worker told me about a safety meeting he recently attended. “The safety manager read from health and safety legislation, but didn’t apply it to our workplace. I heard the words coming out of the manager’s mouth, however, I had no idea what it meant.” As a safety leader, your job is to take the boring written standards, and make it relevant, understandable, engaging and motivational.

There are many ways to do this. A training session can include a video of an incident from security surveillance camera, followed by a discussion of how the incident occurred and what should be done differently. Or a photo of a hazard and a control, and discussion of how and why the control keeps workers safe.

Or, as one safety professional I know did, host a jeopardy game. Divide participants into teams, provide answers and have them work together to guess the correct question. For example, the answer is: pre-use inspection on lift truck. The question is: what should every operator do before using mobile equipment?

The ways in which safety leaders can make safety relevant and engaging are endless. Don’t skimp on preparation and make your messaging meaningful so that employees walk away from meetings and training smarter and safer.