Opinion: Keep Distribution Center Workers Safe
By Kyle Oslos
Director of Logistics
APL Logistics
This Opinion piece appears in the May 17 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
If you could make only one equipment-related investment for your warehouse this year, what might it be? Something like a forklift, a pick-to-light system or new-and-improved racking? Or perhaps it would be something that is just as important, but far more often overlooked: a more proactive approach to warehouse equipment safety, particularly in the case of distribution centers.
DCs — warehouses for products waiting to be ordered and shipped — pose a high level of occupational risk, particularly when equipment is involved. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration recognizes warehouse risks at both the national and state levels, as do several state insurance and workers’ compensation boards. That’s why DCs in the United States have so many equipment-related safety requirements.
However, meeting these minimum requirements doesn’t automatically make your warehouse employees safe, even if you haven’t had any serious accidents or injuries lately. Your DC’s outstanding safety record could be good luck rather than good safety — and luck has a way of running out.
Besides, today’s tenuous business environment means current warehouse employees are under extra pressure to work harder and faster, and they may be more likely to engage in risky behaviors if they think it will improve productivity — unless your company constantly reminds them not to.
However, it’s just as important not to assume that a beefed-up warehouse equipment safety effort is a luxury your company can’t afford.
Granted, it does cost money to hire safety professionals, train your employees and invest in better safety resources. But when you factor in all the expenses associated with unsafe behavior, you may discover that putting extra safety measures in place results in greater savings, not higher expenses.
For example, while workers’ compensation claims can be expensive, some experts suggest they represent only a small percentage of what injuries actually cost a company. The rest of the costs — lost productivity, equipment damage, property damage, OSHA fines, extra insurance and legal fees — usually are several times higher than that. In other words, finding a way to reduce injuries could be more fiscally advantageous than you think.
Besides, you can’t really put a dollar value on making sure your employees return home to their families in the same condition as when they left for work.
Above all, don’t even begin to think your company already has thoroughly covered every equipment safety training topic there is — or that there are no new ways to drive the safety message home.
For example, if your safety effort has focused on preventing major equipment injuries, consider looking at the ergonomics associated with your material handling and the amount of time employees spend on repetitive-motion tasks without resting or changing tasks.
If most of your forklift safety training has involved your forklift operators, think about doing a training session that caters more to your facility’s pedestrians. After all, they’re the ones more likely to step out of blind aisles without looking both ways, walk underneath a load or try to hitch a ride just for grins.
If you’re not sure where to focus your next equipment training session, take a good, hard look at your workers’ compensation data. You’ll get an amazing insight into injury trends and be able to identify the safety-related Achilles’ heels at your facilities.
Our national warehouse safety director, Dixie Brock, swears that getting access to workers’ compensation data was the turning point in our safety program because it allowed her to tie training initiatives more closely to what actually was happening in the field, preventing even more on-the-job injuries in the process.
The injury rate at our U.S. warehouses is now 62% below the national average.
If you think you’ve said it all a hundred times before, making old messages new again is limited only by your imagination and your employees’ ideas. For example:
n Some of our facilities use games such as “Safety Bingo” and “Are You Smarter Than Your Safety Committee?” to make safety initiatives more palatable and motivating.
n Other facilities stage an annual safety picnic and invite local safety officials to make presentations.
n One manager even had parts of his warehouse painted pink because his research suggested it would make them more visible to forklift operators and less susceptible to collision.
n Another facility has “Safety Police” who issue citations when they see safe behavior, rather than the other way around.
Finally, ask your vendors for help: Many equipment companies offer free safety training for their products, and we’ve even found workers’ compensation companies willing to help develop new training courses upon request.
Will these suggestions require some extra effort on your company’s part? Of course, but that’s a small price to pay for knowing you’re doing your part to keep your employees as safe as possible. There always will be times when you second-guess your decision to invest in one piece of equipment instead of another, but you’ll never regret equipping your employees with the knowledge they need to stay injury-free.
APL Logistics, whose U.S. head office is in Scottsdale, Ariz., provides supply chain management services and operates warehouses around the world.
