3 New Safety Training Trends

Safety Training Trends by Storage Equipment Experts UK

Our racking inspection training course is the pinnacle of safety training, but safety training is making leaps and bounds in other areas too. Welcome to the future of safety!

Everything is subject to change and safety training is no different. As business models evolve in the face of cutting-edge technologies, safety training has also developed some new and exciting ideas. Our racking inspection training course is still immensely popular, but

who’s to say that — in 20 years’ time — it won’t include some of these innovative new ideas?

1. Safety Villages: The Safe Place for Children to Make Mistakes

How is your child meant to know what to do if there’s a fire? You could tell them, but some people learn better by doing. So how can you let your children act out what to do in the event of danger without actually putting them in danger? The answer to that question is precisely what drove Terri Kindberg to develop their Chautauqua Children’s Safety Education Village.

The “safety village” looks somewhat like a film set and is filled with mock dangers that the children are encouraged to navigate their way through with the help of a few trained instructors. As of July 2016, there are only a dozen or so of these villages across North America, but the nonprofit responsible aims to develop more in the future.

2. Drones, The SEMA Safety Conference, and The Future of Racking Inspection Training?

November 2015’s SEMA Safety Conference was a veritable hub of safety innovation as speakers from across the industry came together to discuss how to improve upon SEMA’s already high standards. One the ideas put forward by Steve Cowen from SEMA was the introduction of drones to perform rack safety inspections.

While he conceded that there would be many legal and logistical hurdles, he believed that the principle of the idea was more than a gimmick. There are some racking systems which some SEMA approved rack inspectors (SARIs) will, quite rightly, refuse to inspect because of how dangerous they are. If a SARI can tell, from a distance, that a racking system is unsafe then that it is because it is extremely unsafe.

Cowen suggested that a solution to this would be racking inspection via drones. These unmanned machines are fitted with cameras which allow for people to inspect a racking system in detail but, crucially, do so from a distance. If this idea is adopted by SEMA, it could spell big changes for our current racking inspection training course.

3. Automation and Robot Racking Inspection Training

Drones are one thing, but could the future mean that the job of racking safety and racking inspection training is entirely replaced autonomous machines? No. At least, not the near future… Who’s to say what rack safety inspections and racking inspection training will look like in hundreds of years time?

For the foreseeable future though, SEMA approved racking inspectors across the UK have their title because they are able to spot the things that machines and those with a basic level of racking safety knowledge cannot. The automation of labour

has lead many to wonder about the security of their respective industry, but we have always been at the forefront of racking inspection training. As long we stay that way, our racking inspection training course will remain the best option for years to come.

Contact Storage Equipment Experts for rack safety inspections and training from the people at the forefront of the racking inspection industry.

Don’t Stay Silent about Warehouse and Racking Safety!

Warehouse and Racking Safety UK

Warehouse and racking safety requires carefulness, regular rack inspections, and workers who are free to speak up about potential problems.

Warehouse and racking safety is not a dogma; it is a dialogue between employees, employers, customers, safety experts, and the government. Everyone should have a say in how our warehouses can be made safer because warehouse and racking safety affects everyone.

However, while this is something which we at Storage Equipment Experts believe in, it is evidently not an idea shared by everyone. Workers at a supermarket distribution company were recently fired because they raised concerns over health and safety. Silencing whistleblowers does not help to make warehouses safer. The fear that employees are not allowed to talk about warehouse or racking safety leads to a culture of danger and worker exploitation.

The recent trial over the conditions at Sports Directs’ main distribution warehouse shows what happens when employees are not free to express their concerns over safety. Workers were pushed to the limit in extremely unsafe conditions and, as a result, the centre was forced to make 83 ambulance calls over the course of two years.

The Law Requires Safety Inspections: Warehouse Racking Inspections, Forklift Inspections, and Many Other Safety Inspections

Employers are legally obliged to ensure that their warehouse is being operated in accordance with HSE standards. These regulations are in place because they save lives and they should not be ignored. Employees should be encouraged — not punished — for raising health and safety issues, especially when those issues concern the law.

With regards to warehouse and racking safety, employers are legally required to make sure their racking is inspected by a safety expert — a SEMA approved rack inspector — at least once a year. Should an employee notice a problem, they should mention this to their employer. In fact, HSE encourages employers to conduct rack safety inspections of their own on a regular basis.

Employers should not be quiet about warehouse and racking safety. Rather it is both a legal requirement — and good business — to make sure that they are actively involved in a frank and open discussion about warehouse and racking safety. This is why we provide racking inspection training from a SEMA approved inspector.

Safe, Smart, and Confident Employees are Better for Business

Businesses with employees who are educated on safety issues are better for several reasons. For a start, safety training of any kind helps to motivate employees as they feel more invested in and a bigger part of the team. Both warehouse racking inspection training for small businesses and warehouse racking inspection training for big businesses have the psychological benefits that come from spending money on human capital. However, the other reason safer and smarter employees are better for business is cold hard cash.

Rack Safety Inspections Now Mean Bigger Profits Later

OSHA calculate that businesses who spend more on safety save money in the long run. Specifically, for every dollar a business spends on safety, they can save up to six dollars. This makes perfect sense. Rack safety inspections are a small expense, but the potential returns on this investment are huge.

After failing to adhere to warehouse safety standards, the international beer-giant Anheuser-Busch had to pay a jaw-dropping $162,000 fine. A racking safety inspection from a racking inspection expert could have saved them from this monetary cost, and sometimes the costs of not paying for a warehouse safety inspection are much worse than a fine. Casualties and — in some tragic cases — fatalities are the very real result of failing to invest in racking safety.

Businesses and their staff have no reason to stay silent about warehouse and racking safety. The warehousing, logistics, and supply chain industry works better for everyone when everyone is free to talk about safety in a frank and informed way.

Don’t be silent and don’t ignore racking safety! Contact Storage Equipment Experts for a quote on your next warehouse racking inspection.

A Beginner’s Guide to Rack Safety Inspections and Racking Inspection Checklists

SEMA Approved Racking Inspections

At Storage Equipment Experts, we instruct businesses on pallet racking safety. Fully-fledged racking inspection training and comprehensive racking inspection checklists are not the only things that we do. One of our most useful services is a basic introduction to racking inspections.

Our infographic should serve as a starting point for businesses who want their staff to learn more about racking inspections and how racking inspection checklists work. It’s a great graphic to print out and put around your workplace. And it’s yours for free! Of course, that’s not the only free thing we offer at Storage Equipment Experts…

Our Racking Inspection Checklist is Free and Easy-to-Use

If you want to carry out your own regular internal racking inspections (as recommended by HSE), you can download our free and easy-to-use racking inspection checklist right here. Before using it though, we would strongly recommend also undergoing racking inspection training.

Our infographic is a great introduction, but for a detailed course on how racking inspections are performed look no further than our racking inspection training course. This course will give your staff the confidence and knowledge to carry out regular internal racking inspections in accordance with HSE’s recommended “traffic light” racking safety system. For this, you can use our racking inspection checklist.

Our Infographic, Our Racking Inspection Checklist, and Our Racking Inspection Course: The Perfect Trilogy

Great things come in threes, and that’s why we recommend using our infographic alongside our checklist and racking inspection training for the perfect three-pronged approach to racking safety. However, racking safety still has one more important element: expert rack safety inspections.

Rack Safety Inspections from Racking Inspection Experts

These safety inspections are required by law — and for good reason. Though our infographic, checklist, and training will help you with the day-to-day upkeep and inspection of your racking, a certified expert is required by HSE to visit your warehouse at least once a year. HSE recommends SEMA approved inspectors for this job. After all, damage is not always obvious. There are some things which require a racking inspection expert to spot.

For the non-experts though, this infographic serves as a great place to start. Understanding the basics is simple when you break it down, and so that’s just what we’ve done with our infographic.

Rack Safety Inspections

Rack safety inspections are all about knowledge and discipline. That’s why we are keen to share that knowledge as much as possible. At Storage Equipment Experts, we are here to teach you everything you need to know to perform your own regular internal racking inspections. And we are also here when you need an expert racking inspector — a SEMA approved rack inspector — to spot something you might have missed and to give you the advice you need to keep your racking, your warehouse, and your business safe. Our job is to help to you do your job better and safer. Whatever your business, contact us for your next rack safety inspection.

Now that you know the basics, it’s time to call in the experts. Contact us for your next SEMA-approved racking inspection.

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5 Common Misconceptions About Health and Safety

Health and Safety UK

Misinformation is everywhere! So we at Storage Equipment Experts feel like it’s high time to do some health and safety myth busting

If there’s one consistently popular — and usually inaccurate — news story, it’s the one about health and safety “going too far”. After all, some people just love to hate health and safety.

But “health and safety gone mad!” is more than just a worn out cliche; it’s damaging to the reputation of health and safety and all the good work it does. What is rarely mentioned in these fabricated tales is how HSE has helped to reduce workplace fatalities by 86 per cent and workplace injuries by 77 per cent.

So, in order to clear health and safety’s name, here are some common health and safety myths debunked.

1. Mixing Milk: A Cocktail of Workplace Danger!

In a Costa Coffee in Sheffield, a customer asked if their barista would be able to mix whole milk and skimmed milk for them. The customer obviously felt that this would be a creative solution to the fact that the cafe didn’t serve semi-skimmed milk, so you can imagine their shock when they were told that mixing milk would violate health and safety.

Unless the resulting milk was somehow poisonous, this simply is not true. In fact, HSE itself stepped in and described the incident as a “clear case of poor customer service hiding behind the guise of health and safety”.

It so happens that the customer being served was a health and safety manager in the construction industry. She stated that debacles like this trivialise health and safety, and we couldn’t agree more. In cases like this, “health and safety” becomes a catch-all term for “things we can’t/don’t want to do”. Health and safety is about keeping people safe, not about providing excuses for customer service or trading standards issues.

2. Don’t be Such a Baby! Staff Refusing to Heat Up Food for Infants

Many parents, and many employees of cafes and restaurants, have been in this exact situation. A parent walks up to the counter of a quiet restaurant and asks the staff member if they could just pop their microwavable tupperware or baby bottle in the microwave for a moment. It’s not a big ask, is it?

Except that the health and safety police have stepped in. Restaurants and cafes can’t heat up baby food because — well — health and safety. What a crazy world we live in!

Once again, this is not true. HSE have confirmed that restaurants, cafes, hotels, or any other private business with a microwave are free to use them to heat up baby food. HSE have never said anything of the sort and they claim that myths like these probably originate from “jobsworths” who are looking for a reason to avoid doing more work than they have to. The problem is that these “completely nonsensical interpretations” then spread and taken as fact. Moreover, these lies only help to make people sceptical of the important work HSE does.

3. Does My Apartment Balcony Need a Rack Safety Inspection?

You probably already knew this, but no. Balconies do not need rack safety inspections because they are — balconies. And yet, that didn’t stop one landlord acting as if balconies should be subject to the same standards of safety as warehouses. They released a statement asking tenants to refrain from storing large items or drying clothes on their balconies because of health and safety.

Storage safety is important, which is why we provide rack safety inspections for businesses across the UK, but a landlord should have the wherewithal to trust tenants with their own personal storage. Your warehouse may need regular warehouse racking inspections and guidance to ensure safe storage, but your balcony does not. We at Storage Equipment Experts and HSE both have faith in people to be able to store things safely in the comfort of their own home.

HSE’s comment was that this “misuse of “health and safety”” was simply “an excuse for banning the use of balconies for activities which would detract from the overall appearance of the property”. It’s yet another example of a business owner, a landlord, blaming an unpopular decision on health and safety to save face.

4. Sorry to Burst Your Bubble But…

Children’s birthday parties and bubbles go together like HSE and SEMA-approved racking inspections. They’re both great relationships and — most importantly — they are both perfectly safe relationships. So why would HSE ban the use of a bubble machine at a birthday party? It’s absolute madness!

The madness is that people believe they would. No, HSE doesn’t want to ban bubbles from children’s birthday parties. Their comment on this was that people usually blame these over-zealous decisions on health and safety in order to hide their real motives — “fear of being sued perhaps, or bad customer service”.

5. Health and Selfies: No Selfie Sticks in British Nightclubs

The logic behind this makes sense. Selfie sticks are big metal contraptions that get swung around with abandon as groups of friends try to get the perfect picture of themselves. Throw in some drink, loud music, and a hugely crowded room and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a disaster. It’s no wonder that HSE has banned selfie sticks from nightclubs.

Except that, they haven’t. HSE has no problem with this whatsoever. In debunking this myth, Lord Freud stated that “it’s never been easier to understand the rules and make the right choice”. Once again, this is likely the case of management using health and safety to protect themselves from an unpopular decision.

Selfie sticks are something of a phenomenon, but it’s easy to see why a nightclub owner — and many of his loyal, non-selfie-stick-owning customers — might be fed up with them. Still, if a nightclub owner (or any business owner) wants to ban selfie sticks from their establishment, they need to be honest about their reasons.

There are countless other health and safety myths out there, and HSE is desperately trying to debunk almost as fast as they are being created. But for health and safety to truly be appreciated for the good that it is, others need to step in, expose the lies, and explain why HSE is — in fact — a great thing for British business.

Contact Storage Equipment Experts for a racking safety inspection and racking inspection training from the people who will cut through the jargon tell you the truth about health and safety.

A Day in the Life: What Do SEMA Approved Inspectors Do?

EMA Approved Inspectors - warehouse racking inspections standards

Being a SEMA approved racking inspector means maintaining high standards, but what exactly are those standards?

And what does an average day look like for a SEMA approved inspector?

With clients based all over the UK and Ireland, no two days in the life of a SEMA approved inspector at Storage Equipment Experts are ever the same. The job requires a willingness to travel as well as knowledge of racking safety, a disciplined approach to racking inspections, and the ability to teach. A SEMA approved inspector needs to understand science, business, and the value of safety. It’s all in a day’s work!

Our SEMA Approved Inspector Travels Across the UK and Ireland

At Storage Equipment Experts, we are willing to travel to every corner of the UK and Ireland to deliver SEMA approved rack inspections. We are not limited by geography. Our base in London means that getting to anywhere in the UK, by motorbike, car, train, or plane, is no issue whatsoever.

As the only SEMA approved racking inspector based in the London area, we at Storage Equipment experts are particularly good at inspecting racking inside — or just outside — the M25. However, as has been previously mentioned, we are also more than willing to travel anywhere in the UK.

How Do Businesses Respond to a SEMA Approved Inspector Performing a Warehouse Racking Inspection?

Some of the people we visit are having their first ever racking inspection from a SEMA approved inspector. This is surprising, considering that HSE recommends a racking inspection from SEMA approved inspector at least once a year, though it makes more sense when you consider the general confusion British businesses sometimes feel towards health and safety. According to a study by HSE in 2015 404, 72 per cent of business owners surveyed claimed that they felt keeping up with new HSE regulations was a burden.

Both HSE and Storage Equipment Experts are striving to change that mentality. In HSE’s 2016-2017 business plan, dispelling myths and helping with misunderstanding about health and safety were two of their biggest aims 404. The aim is to get the message across. Health and safety doesn’t restrict business; it makes business better.

In the 2015 survey, 58 per cent of businesses said that their perception of HSE had changed for the better after a visit from HSE compared with just two per cent who claimed it had changed for the worse. This is certainly something which we see at Storage Equipment Experts. After a visit from a SEMA approved racking inspector — a racking inspection expert — many businesses have a much more positive attitude towards health and safety.

In fact, after a visit from us, many businesses are keen to receive racking inspection training so that their staff can carry out their own internal racking inspections on a more regular basis. This something which HSE also recommends.

All of which goes to show that the best way to cure British workplaces of ignorance and confusion towards health and safety is to confront it head on.

How Does a SEMA Approved Inspector Perform a Warehouse Racking Inspection?

Carefully. A SEMA approved inspector performs a warehouse racking inspection carefully. Awareness about rack safety and warehouse racking inspections is increasing every year. As a result, it is our responsibility at Storage Equipment Experts to maintain the highest standards as more and more people learn about the benefits of racking inspections and racking inspection training.

The condition of racking systems can be deceptive at first glance, and this is why we need SEMA approved inspectors. After all, racking damage isn’t always obvious. A warehouse can be clean, neat, and otherwise completely safe, but just because there isn’t damage that doesn’t mean that there isn’t danger. Missing safety locks are a surprisingly common fault. These missing locks may seem innocuous, but without them, the racking system could collapse at any moment.

Sometimes, particularly in more established businesses, a fast-paced and pressurised business environment can lead to the overloading of racking systems. In some extreme cases, this may have been going on for years without businesses paying any attention to it. This is the sort of danger that requires fresh eyes to see. It’s easy to become acclimatised to danger if it’s been there for so long, but that doesn’t make it okay.

What Happens After a Warehouse Racking Inspection from a SEMA Approved Inspector?

At Storage Equipment Experts, we are always there to recommend the best course of action following one of our inspections. Ultimately, it is the legal responsibility of the business itself to implement the change their warehouse may need. The new CDM regulations make this clear the buck stops with the business owner.

Repairing or replacing parts of — or the whole of — a racking system can cause short-term disruption. However, much like in every area of business, certain investments are absolutely necessary. No serious business can knowingly continue to operate with an unsafe racking system especially when an expert has told them exactly what the problem is. At that point, a business owner can no longer feign ignorance.

It need not get to this point. Annual racking inspections from a racking inspection expert, as well as staff who are trained in how to perform regular internal racking inspections, will make sure that your business is not in a position where they are forced to replace or repair their racking. Racking systems are sturdy, reliable, and can last for years if treated properly. At Storage Equipment Experts, our day to day job is making sure that businesses realise that fact.

Now that you know what we do, why don’t you invite us over for a visit? Our SEMA approved inspector travels all over the UK delivering the best warehouse racking inspections in the country.