What is your top priority at work? If it’s pushing sales, it’s time to reevaluate your priorities. It should start with employee safety. Accidents happen, but you want to do everything in your power to take precautionary steps to avoid accidents and avoidable mistakes. Let’s go over two basics of how to improve employee safety in your warehouse.

KEEP YOUR WAREHOUSE CLEAN

It’s only a matter of time for something bad to happen if your warehouse is a mess. Extra products laying on the floor waiting for open shelf space or a group of machines parked in the wrong place could disrupt employee workflows. When messiness interrupts, employees unintentionally look for unsafe ways around the issue. Keeping your warehouse clean is worth the extra few minutes to stop your production and organize or clean whatever the issue may be.

ENSURE EMPLOYEE SAFETY BY REVIEWING BEST PRACTICES

Although we oftentimes don’t think too much about these smaller injuries, they are having a longer lasting and more expensive impact on employees.

Here is an interesting statistic, 40 percent of all warehouse injuries are ergonomic, soft-tissue related (muscles, ligaments, and tendons). But 60 percent of all dollars spent on warehouse injuries come from these soft-tissue problems. That means that although less than half of the injuries are soft-tissue, they are the bulk of the cost. It adds up to a $4 billion annually.

These injuries happen most from workers running, tripping, falling, climbing racks, and lifting more than they should.

For both small and big issues, it is worth reviewing warehouse safety practices with your employees, even if that includes how to lift a box properly and staying alert. Doing so will protect you, your beloved employees, and their jobs. Don’t forget to review the OSHA guidelines with employees as well. We also recommend you review best practices for the following:

• Operating forklifts, especially when driving around a loading dock and door. We see too many accidents of forklifts taking out doors
• Communicating around hazards
• Stacking heights on racks
• Working on and around a dock
• Handling of any other tools

You may see it as a few more hours of work on your plate that you don’t have time for, but you will never regret improving employee safety in your warehouse. And neither will your workers.