For many warehouse workers, the end of the year is bitter-sweet. There is the holiday period, Christmas, office parties, but this is also when more accidents are liable to occur. The pressure for warehouses to meet up with the Christmas rush often increases the chances of accidents occurring. Whether it’s staff paying a little less attention to their duties, inexperienced temp workers or the high traffic volume, accidents become an almost daily occurrence.

Regardless of operational changes made to meet demand, accidents are not a desired  outcome. While the average warehouse is a bustling hive of moving forklifts, heavy machinery and human traffic, with a little more awareness, most accidents can be avoided. The common attitude is to pass the ‘safety buck’ to supervisors, but taking personal responsibility can help reduce accident rates.

An example is in the occurrence of back strain, one of the most frequent types of injuries in a warehouse. Accounting for up to 50% of reported injuries, they’re often caused by the pulling of heavy loads using a manual pallet jack.

One way to minimise the incidence of this injury is to have the load weighed and the weight communicated to the picker. It’s recommended that loads over 500kg must be moved using a powered pallet jack or a forklift. Any other method has a high probability of ending in an accident.

Improving safety by making changes, can disrupt organizational performance, but understanding certain factors can help avoid any disruption. Part of the big picture is understanding how the following factors affect safety levels: –

Organizational Factors – As warehouses grow, they tend to get fill up with ‘junk’, and  companies rarely take the time to sort out the clutter. Obsolete equipment, damaged freight even debris, can accumulate ‘out of sight’, reducing available space and constituting hazards.

 Operational Factors – In 98% of organisations, there’s a degree of conflict or disagreement between workers and their supervisors. Moving up the hierarchy doesn’t change this, as supervisors clash with managers, managers with department heads and so on. While everyone feels they are doing the best job they can, disagreements often stem from a lack of communication.

 Layout Factors – The infrequent optimization manifests in a narrowing of aisles, staff tripping over exposed pallets, forklifts bumping into racking due to a small turning radius etc. All these are potential accidents, which can be avoided.

With these factors laid out, you can imagine the ‘chaos’ when there are more staff in the building and even more freight to move; it becomes a real Nightmare before Christmas. But all’s not lost; if you’d like to see the numbers on your ‘Days Without Incident’ sign go up, pay attention to our recommendations.

 

Organizational Factors

• A cluttered warehouse puts your employees at risk of trips and falls; even forklifts can get tyres caught in shrink wrap debris. A thorough spring-clean doesn’t have to be an impossible task. Start with creating a schedule (e.g. two days a week) where all equipment is turned off for cleaning. Designate staff members to cleaning teams, so that when the cleaning day comes around, everyone knows what is expected of them.
• Another factor that impacts safety is the wrong use of pallets and pallet racking. Using the wrong-sized pallet for a load exposes it to the risk of toppling and falling, when stored at height. Educating staff to understand racking capacities and how to estimate the weight of a load, is vital to prevent these type of accidents.
• Equipment failure can also cause safety concerns; the most common one is the collapse of a damaged pallet rack. While it may look ‘cool’ on YouTube, the damage it causes is no laughing matter. All equipment should have a regular inspection, in some cases a daily checklist, to ensure they are safe to use.

These three recommendations are a part of a series on warehouse safety; please join us next week for the concluding part.

At Monarch Limited, we believe that every accident is avoidable, regardless of the season or size of warehouse. By choosing the correct storage medium and having the right company culture, any distribution centre can reduce accidents to zero.

As suppliers of high quality warehouse storage equipment, we offer refurbished and brand new models. We want to help you find equipment to suits your needs and stays within budget. Stumped about what goes where? Contact us today for a consultation to assess your requirements and suggest options.