How To Keep The Warehouse Safety Magic Alive
Tue, 08/18/2015 – 9:15am
Andy Brousseau
When Serena Williams earned her sixth Wimbledon title earlier this summer, she didn’t just become the oldest woman to win a major tennis tournament in the open era. She also became an inspiration to those of us who spearhead warehouse safety programs across the country.
Like Serena, many safety programs have been around for years and racked up several major victories along the way. However, like her, our programs are also getting “up there” — and that’s not necessarily an advantage in an arena where gaining maturity can mean losing your edge.
After all, it’s very easy to substantially reduce injuries during a safety program’s early years, when employees are receiving training for the first time. But it’s considerably harder to keep concerns about safety fresh and relevant over an extended period of time.
Thankfully Serena’s victory serves as a welcome reminder that you don’t have to be new in order to be effective. In fact, with the right kinds of tools, techniques and practices like the following, it’s possible to get even better with age.
Tie your program more directly into your worker’s compensation claims.
Although this may sound like a recommendation to accentuate the negative (essentially calling attention to the accidents and injuries your safety program was unable to prevent), there’s a very positive reason behind it, because nothing has the potential to boost your safety program’s efficacy quite like the data contained in these documents.
Among other things, it can help pinpoint your company’s most common injuries and identify “problem” locations within your DC network. In addition, it can quickly reveal which kinds of accidents are costing your company the most and which kinds of incidents seem to be making an unfortunate comeback.
As a result, you’ll be able to do a considerably better job of focusing your safety efforts and resources in the best possible areas.
My company began using this data-driven approach more than a decade ago, and it was the single most important step our initiative ever took; in fact it played an instrumental role in ensuring that our safety program’s second decade of operation posted even better results than its first.
Mix up your safety training tools and messages.
Whoever coined the expression “variety is the spice of life” probably knew more than a thing or two about safety programs, because the quickest way to lose the attention of your employees is to adopt a one-note, single-channel approach to training.
As your safety program matures, aim to diversify your messaging via a combination of everything from classroom instruction and manuals to videos, e-mails, web sites, visual displays and even games. It will vastly increase the chance that your safety messages will resonate with everyone in your employee audience instead of just a select few. And it will help you re-communicate some of the most essential safety policies or tips as often as needed without seeming repetitive.
Just as important make sure you continue to schedule frequent safety training sessions at each DC location you operate — and by frequent I don’t just mean just often enough to meet the OSHA-mandated minimum. Due to our industry’s high rate of turnover, your company will always have warehouse employees who didn’t receive the benefit of your initial educational sessions. Plus, even the best of your supply chain professionals will occasionally require re-education for key subjects such as industrial equipment safety.
Above all, don’t think you only have to rely solely on your own company to achieve all of this. Our company’s worker’s compensation insurer has been hugely accommodating about creating some outstanding training courses for our forklift safety and ergonomic awareness efforts. And several industrial equipment manufacturers also offer highly educational and easily adaptable training courses.
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How To Keep The Warehouse Safety Magic Alive