Running a warehouse is a fun job, but it comes with a lot of responsibilities and part of those responsibilities is ensuring it’s safe. When you have employees and clients entering a warehouse, it’s essential that they feel safe inside and aren’t put at risk in any way – if anything were to happen and it was found out that the warehouse wasn’t safe and wasn’t following the correct protocols, you could be putting yourself in danger of neglecting your role as someone running a warehouse.
As someone in charge of a warehouse, there are some essential measures you should be following for a secure workplace. You should be implementing advanced safety barriers, using automation to enhance safety protocols, having a comprehensive employee training program, and integrating IoT and smart technologies, amongst other things.
To help give you some insight, we have put together the following guide on warehouse safety and essential measures for a secure workplace. Keep on reading to learn more.
Implementing Advanced Safety Barriers in Modern Warehouses
Being a warehouse, there is a good chance you have a lot of deliveries coming in and out of the warehouse. This means you probably have a lot of lorries or big vans entering your premises to deliver or stock up. When you have this, you must implement advanced safety barriers to keep everyone safe. Having a pull out safety barrier is useful as well as a compact boom barrier as they arrive on site. You may want an EasyExpand wall and rack-mounted barrier and cones if you have a set place where the lorries enter and from.
Leveraging Automation for Enhanced Safety Protocols
Warehouses are dynamic environments where efficiency and safety must go hand in hand. Automation can be useful as it removes human error and allows your staff to work on other areas of safety. You can use Cobots, to work alongside your employees to assist them with repetitive or high-risk tasks, such as sorting or packing. Automated guided vehicles can be used to reduce manual lifting and transporting of goods across the warehouse – this is particularly useful if you have heavy loads that need moving or work with hazardous waste.
Comprehensive Employee Training Programs for Future Safety Standards
Having comprehensive employee training programs is useful no matter where you work or what industry you are in. Every business should be training their employees to be better at their jobs, whether it’s the sales team, marketing team, accounts team, or in this case workplace safety. If you haven’t already, you should put together a comprehensive employee training program that covers every and is future-proofed for safety standards in the future. The more training your employees have, the safer they will be when working in your warehouse.
Integrating IoT and Smart Technologies to Monitor Warehouse Safety
IoT-enabled sensors monitor temperature, humidity, and structural stability in real time. They can also detect equipment malfunctions or hazardous conditions, triggering alerts to prevent accidents before they occur. We use IoT a lot in our day-to-day lives, without even realizing we are using it, a few home examples include Google lighting or your home security system. Your Apple Watch or Samsung Watch monitors your health in real time which is another example of IoT.
Invest in drones
Investing in drones for your warehouse can be very useful and help make it a safer place as you can use drones to reach hard-to-get areas. You can send a drone up and inspect areas of your warehouse to ensure its structure is correct as well as use drones to assess the way your higher-up items are being stored. They are easy to operate and with technology developing them regularly, they have become more affordable for businesses to buy. If you haven’t used a drone before, visit your local drone specialist and they will be able to demonstrate how you can use it in your warehouse and suggest the best drones to help with safety. There are a plethora of drones that have been designed with safety as their main priority. If your budget doesn’t allow you to buy one outright, you can look into monthly installments to make it cheaper for you.
There are many ways to ensure a safe workplace for your warehouse, the above are a few suggestions of many. With a quick search online you’ll mind a plethora of additional measures that you can take alongside the above suggestions. As someone running a warehouse, it’s essential that you take safety in the warehouse as a priority.
What essential measures for a secure workplace have you taken? Which of the above tips did you find most useful? Is there anything missing in our guide that you think we should be adding? Let us know in the comment box below, we look forward to hearing from you.
