Safety is essential in any workplace, but it's imperative in warehouses, where you may have offices, storage and transportation methods in the same space. Here are six ways you can ensure employee safety while running a warehouse.
1. Utilize Portable Offices
A portable office can be a good investment for your warehouse's safety features, mainly if it's a large building or area. With a mobile office, whoever is utilizing it can freely move around the space without leaving his or her office, which means he or she can more easily monitor machines and employees. Most portable offices for sale will have portable air conditioning, independent electrical power, and desks and storage. This allows you to do office work while moving around the warehouse and performing monitoring duties.
2. Install Privacy Features
A privacy booth for the office is commonly understood as a way to increase productivity and allow employees to concentrate more easily. Employees can use privacy booths to attend meetings in a soundproof space, make phone calls or work on projects without being disturbed. However, you can also employ them for security purposes. Soundproofing in these booths means meetings or calls containing sensitive information will remain confidential and unheard by uninvited people, for example.
3. Ensure Your Warehouse Is OSHA Compliant
All workplaces must comply with the OSHA regulations for their types. Different requirements and guidelines exist for other workplaces, including offices, factories and warehouses. Regulation and standards requirements include records, fall prevention, workers' rights and personal protective equipment. It means not only are the workers wearing the protective equipment but they are tested periodically to check if they are working right. Workers' noise monitoring is done regularly to ensure a safe working environment for the employees. If you are found to be non-compliant with OSHA regulations, you may be at risk for legal action and liable for any hazards found or accidents that occur on your property.
4. Enforce Existing Safety Policies
It's more than likely you already have safety policies in place. However, this doesn't mean those policies are easily accessible to employees or are consistently enforced. If policies aren't enforced, they aren't of much use in promoting and ensuring employee safety in your warehouse. You should create formal written versions of your safety policies and make sure they're written in clear, concise, well-defined verbiage. Have managers monitor employees to see whether safety policies are being followed. Post simplified versions of your policies in prominent and high-traffic areas to ensure all employees have access to them.
5. Review Your Safety Policies Periodically
OSHA regulations and individual industry standards may change over time. Likewise, you may have holes in your safety roles, or something unexpected may happen that causes you to need to reassess your safety policies. You should strive to circumvent these scenarios as much as possible. Periodically review OSHA's regulations and the standards of your industry. Conduct safety inspections at your warehouse regularly. When you can, conduct tests and analyze safety features to check for issues or problems with equipment. You should review your safety and security policies annually and concurrently with any other reviews, inspections and tests. This way, you can update your policies as soon as possible. Be sure to make your employees aware whenever an update is made to your guidelines.
6. Train Employees Thoroughly
Even if your safety policies and rules are airtight, there is a risk your employees may not understand them or know where to access them. To ensure the effectiveness of your policies and regulations, you need to train employees to follow them and make sure the information is easily accessible to employees. Make certain employees are thoroughly trained when they're being onboarded and provide periodic training updates. Annual safety and security training are standard. If there is an unexpected change to your safety protocols, notify employees immediately. Employees aware of safety regulations can better integrate those practices into their work and stay safe.
There are many ways you can maintain or improve safety and security in your warehouse. Most of these methods can be employed in any warehouse, no matter the size or inventory of that warehouse.
