For many companies, the warehouse is the beating heart of their business. It’s the place where goods come in, are stored, and go out. They can be very busy places and as a result, are somewhere where accidents can easily occur.
Stockers and order fillers in warehouses account for 150 accidents per 10,000 employees. With such a high risk of accident, it’s important to work on improving warehouse operation with a view to ensuring good health and safety procedures are in place at all times.
In this article, we’ll look at six common warehouse safety mistakes and how you can avoid them.
1. Holding Too Much Inventory
If your shelves are overloaded, this poses a huge risk to your workers. The more inventory you have on your shelves, the more likely it’ll be that items fall.
When inventory falls from a shelf, it could cause injury to anyone nearby.
It’s important that you limit the amount of inventory you hold unless you have the scope to expand your storage.
2. Not Optimizing Picking Path
When it comes to picking inventory for orders or delivery, you’ll need to follow a logical path. This is as important for efficiency as it is for health and safety.
If your picking paths are optimized, there’ll be less chance of trolleys colliding in the warehouse.
Create a logical picking path. Make sure that you have a one-way system throughout your warehouse to avoid accidents.
3. Not Maintaining Housekeeping
If your storage and loading areas aren’t kept tidy and organized at all times, it could lead to accidents occurring. Slips, trips, and falls may become common if you don’t ensure floors are kept clear at all times.
Ensure you have clear rules in place about where items can be safely stored, and keep all areas of your warehouse clean and tidy at all times.
4. Not Training Your Team
Poor warehouse safety training ranks as one of the biggest causes of accidents in the workplace. Poor training leads to employees disregarding safety rules- after all, if you don’t know the rules, how can you follow them?
Spending time and energy in training your team on all of your health and safety procedures will drastically reduce the frequency of accidents in your workplace.
5. Using Poor Lifting Techniques
Lifting and carrying causes a lot of accidents in warehousing. Where lifting and handling procedures are not followed, this can lead to back injuries and items getting dropped.
It’s important to thoroughly train your employees on how to lift items. Bend your knees, keep a straight back, and share the load if it’s too heavy.
6. Not Planning for the Future
Clinging to outdated procedures can lead to accidents. New innovations such as 3pl and warehousing technology are driving change in the way goods are stored.
Understanding opportunities for improvement will help you to stay ahead of health and safety in your warehouse.
Common Warehouse Safety Mistakes
There are plenty of different warehouse safety mistakes that you can make that could cause injuries to your employees. Implementing warehouse safety programs should be your number one priority.
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