Basic Warehouse Safety Rules: How to Ensure Employee Compliance?

Warehouse Safety Rules

Are your employees ignoring basic warehouse safety rules? Follow our expert advice to ensure staff remain compliant at all times.

The term ‘health and safety’ has developed a bit of a stigma in recent years. Overcomplicated rules and regulations, seemingly inane workplace policies and other practices have led many to see the HSE — the UK’s governing body of health and safety management — as a bloated creation of unnecessary safety enforcement.

The result is that many people ignore the health and safety rules their workplaces have put in place. It is not uncommon to find employees disregarding company policy because they don’t respect the significance of the health and safety measures established.

Of course, there is no smoke without fire. Health and safety rules have taken some steps in the wrong direction in the past. A 2011 study outlined a number of ‘pointless’ EU laws that forced British businesses into costly and unnecessary risk avoidance strategies.

However, overzealous laws do not mean health and safety is completely without merit. Workplaces like warehouses carry a risk of injury and even death. Proper and appropriate health and safety is critical to avoiding such risks, which means employees must comply with company policy.

But in a world where health and safety is known for being mostly superfluous, how do you achieve this?

Encourage High-Priority Safety Culture

What does encouraging a safety culture mean? It means getting your employees to understand the importance of basic warehouse safety rules and why they are in place. Stressing the significance of your health and safety rules is imperative to workers actually understanding why they exist.

A strong way to do this is to show examples of potential injuries that can occur should health and safety rules not be followed. If you can find real-life circumstances and examples that illustrate your point, use them.

The aim is to cultivate a safety-conscious culture within your warehouse, where your staff not only respect the policies in place, but actively work to ensure they are followed. Encouraging employees to report breaches is another tactic you can employ. This means that not only will you find out if people are ignoring rules, but that workers will be more likely to follow them as there are more eyes observing their actions.

Avoid Unnecessary Safety Regulations

Part of making sure people respect and understand the importance of your basic warehouse safety rules is ensuring you’re not implementing unnecessary or pointless policies.

You must follow HSE law and duty of care when constructing workplace regulations. However, if you overstep the mark and go beyond what you have to do, you may find employees become less concerned with following certain rules.

If some rules are broken because they are deemed ridiculous, all rules are at risk of being ignored.

Create a dialogue with your staff about health and safety rules. Find out what they think about the regulations in place and work together to create policies that meet legal requirements, while also establishing regulations that employees feel are acceptable and legitimate. Involving your staff helps them engage more with the rules and ensures they place more significance on following them.

Conduct Regular Training

Part of compliance is knowing what you actually have to do, yet confusion at work is not uncommon. In fact, 50% of workers aren’t entirely sure of all their responsibilities. If employees aren’t even clear on what their job is, how can they be clear on all elements of health and safety?

Regular training works to accomplish two things:

  1. It refreshes workers on basic warehouse safety rules and ensures they are aware of exactly what is expected of them;
  2. It ensures they are aware of any new additions to your warehouse’s health and safety policy, such as changes in how to perform certain tasks.

Training means that all your workers know how to be compliant. If they know how to comply, they can’t break the rules by mistake.

Carry Out Spot-Checks

Training is important for compliance, but it’s important to know if your education platform is working.

Conduct spot-checks to find out. This involves not only randomly monitoring employees in the normal work environment, but also testing them. Ask your staff questions about how they would complete certain tasks that require basic warehouse safety rules to be followed.

Random spot-checks can lead to resentment if done improperly, so be sure to take an unbiased approach. This means monitoring and testing all individuals in the same way, no matter what position of authority they hold.

Ensure Consequence for Non-Compliance

Unless there is a health and safety breach as a result of negligence or non-compliance, there is no legal requirement that somebody face punishment as a consequence for ignoring health and safety.

That responsibility falls to the business.

Instigating a clear policy for non-compliance is an unfortunate but necessary task when it comes to combating disregard for health and safety rules. If your employees see no consequence for breaking rules, other than a slap on the wrist, then they’ll continue to do so. In continuing with such behaviour, they put others and themselves at serious risk.

Employees who do not comply with your basic warehouse safety rules must be disciplined accordingly, with punishments appropriate to the severity of the misconduct.

Reward Those Who Follow Basic Warehouse Safety Rules

Those who break the rules should be punished, but those who follow them shouldn’t be forgotten. Reward and incentive schemes are powerful tools for compliance and improving overall productivity. Staff who receive rewards for their efforts are, on average, 50% more engaged with their workplace than those who don’t, and are more motivated, too.

Engagement with basic warehouse safety rules is crucial to guaranteeing compliance. Having people motivated to comply is just a bonus. But how do you reward an employee for following the rules?

Every workplace will have their own unique reward system, as only you will know how to best incentivise your staff. However, here are a few tips. Reward those who:

  • Regularly pass spot-checks
  • Report safety issues without prompting
  • Are observed carrying out appropriate safety processes
  • Are reported to be following regulations properly by floor managers.

Warehouse staff need education in all types of safety procedures, including the use of racking and storage equipment. Our SEMA approved racking inspectors at Storage Equipment Experts can offer training on staying safe at work.

4 Top Warehouse Safety Tips for Business Owners

Warehouse Safety

Warehouse safety requires discipline, but it also requires knowledge.

If you own a warehouse, keeping it safe can be hard. After all, warehouses are big buildings, which means there will be a myriad of different things to consider when you’re performing a risk assessment. To help you along the way, here are four top warehouse safety tips.

Warehouse Safety Tip #1: Use a Floor Map

You are legally required to perform a risk assessment if your business has more than five employees. If it has less, it’s still recommended, but you don’t need to write anything down. As such, “perform a risk assessment” isn’t so much a warehouse safety tip as it is something which you are legally obliged to do.

Floor maps, though, are different. You are not legally required to use them, but they are a great way of helping you specifically with spotting the risks that exist as a result of your flooring. Warehouse floor space can be enormous, so identifying where potential hazards are can be hard if you do it as part of your general risk assessment. By doing your risk assessment for your floor separately through using a floor plan, you can be sure that you don’t miss anything.

Warehouse Safety Tip #2: Invest in Training

According to the CDM Regulations 2015, the people who work in your warehouse need to be “competent”. This notion of “competence” is intended to replace the countless card schemes which existed prior the CDM Regulations 2015, and it comes with a shift in responsibilities from HSE to the “client”. The “client” is the person who runs a construction project or — in the case of warehouses — the person who owns the warehouse.

In summary, the CDM regulations mean that it’s up to the warehouse owner to decide whether or not someone is competent enough to work in their warehouse. If an accident should happen as a result of incompetence, the warehouse owner may be legally responsible.

This change in the onus of responsibility means that safety training is more important than ever. HSE won’t be there to make sure that your staff are trained, but the law will catch up with you if an untrained member of staff makes a dangerous mistake which a competent member of staff wouldn’t have.

Warehouse Safety Tip #3: Record Near Misses

Near misses are not accidents. Yet, they need to be treated as such because the only difference between an injury, a fatality and a near miss is luck. Every business needs a bit of luck when it comes to sales or marketing, but it’s not something which should ever be relied upon when it comes to safety. In fact, as a general rule, you should never rely on luck in business. Just be happy when it happens.

By recording near misses, you get to learn from a mistake without having to suffer the consequences of a mistake. By not recording or not acting upon near misses, you are willfully putting your employees in danger, and they may well have cause to make a legal complaint.

Warehouse safety tip #4: Nominate a person responsible for racking safety (PRRS)

One the one hand, safety is everybody’s responsibility. On the other hand, nominating a person responsible for racking safety (PRRS) guarantees that at least one person will consider the rack safety in your warehouse. This delegation can be done across the board — a person responsible for floor safety, a person responsible for vehicle safety, a person responsible for warehouse security.

Doing so will ensure that at least one person is paying attention to every aspect of warehouse safety at any given time. When combined with proper safety training, it will mean that you know that each responsible person is also a competent person.

For warehouse safety tips and a warehouse safety training course from a SEMA approved racking inspector, contact Storage Equipment Experts today for a FREE quote.

3 Dangers A Warehouse Racking Safety Checklist Can Prevent

top 3 warehouse racking safety checklist

An unkempt warehouse is abundant with dangers, but a warehouse racking safety checklist can dramatically reduce those dangers.

Warehouses aren’t inherently dangerous, but a warehouse filled with untrained staff who have no system for inspecting racking systems can be a dangerous thing. This is what makes warehouse racking safety checklists so important. A fuller appreciation of that importance can be gained by better understanding the specific dangers they can prevent.

1. Warehouse Racking Safety Checklists Prevent Distractions

Distractions are everywhere at work. Your home life, other members of staff, the things you need to do when work finishes: it’s perfectly natural to be juggling thoughts about all of these things while you’re working. The issue is when these thoughts interfere with something which requires your full attention — and a warehouse racking safety inspection requires your full attention.

Having a warehouse racking safety checklist means that you know exactly what you are doing when you doing it.

2. Warehouse Racking Safety Checklists Create Routine

It was Oscar Wilde who said “consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative”. However, when it comes to business, consistency is a wildly underappreciated thing. Breaking new ground and expanding into new areas is great. With regards to safety, though, it’s a lot better to keep things consistent.

When HSE gives its advice on staff-led racking inspections, it doesn’t say “once a week” or “once a month”. Instead, its emphasis is on “regular” racking inspections. There’s good reason for this. Safety is a process which should always be happening. It’s not something you should be “topping up” on if a couple of accidents have happened earlier that week.

A routine for safety ensures that the important work of safety gets done. It means you can resist the temptation to ignore it just because an accident hasn’t happened in a while. You remind yourself that perhaps the reason an accident hasn’t happened is directly due to the routine.

As mentioned above, when inspections are done infrequently, they run the risk of not being done at all. Yet, they also run the risk of being unreliable due to a lack of practice and context.

With regards to practice, quality racking inspections require training — just like anything else. If your staff are to use our warehouse racking inspection checklist, we would only recommend doing so after racking inspection training from a SEMA approved racking inspector. Even then, though, performing racking inspections infrequently means that the knowledge from this training fades away, as it is the regular application of learned knowledge that helps to cement it. With regards to context, your staff can’t know whether a system is acting normally unless they know what normal looks like.

In short, a warehouse without routine is chaotic. Warehouse racking safety checklists prevent that.

3. Warehouse Racking Safety Checklists Stop Laziness

Following on from the last point, lazy staff are rarely intrinsically lazy. More often than not, they are taught to be lazy by a working environment where tasks are not made clear and routine is not expected.

With regards to staff-led racking inspections, performing them with a warehouse racking safety checklist makes the process hard to quantify. A staff member might decide, from a distance, that they have “pretty much” inspected everything because they don’t have anywhere to jot down their observations or what they’ve inspected.

While that extreme case imagines a particularly lazy staff member, it isn’t a stretch to imagine an otherwise reliable staff member missing one or two things because they don’t need to write anything down or refer to anything.

This is a kind of laziness, too, but it’s one which can be easily prevented by giving your staff a checklist to note down what they have and haven’t inspected. A well-made checklist is made specific recommendations for specific parts of a racking system. Asking a staff member to use one while performing their inspection will encourage them to be specific and accurate, too.

To help prevent dangers in your warehouse, download our FREE warehouse racking safety checklist

Contact us for a FREE consultation on our full range of racking inspection services.

Make Warehouse Safety Your New Year’s Resolution

a woman in a warehouse with a clipboard conducting a racking inspection

A racking inspection form is an actionable way to make your New Year’s resolution a reality

According to the data, 92% of people fail their New Year’s resolution — and this should hardly come as surprise. Most New Year’s resolutions are either too ambitious, too vague or just don’t have the right motivations behind them.

This is where a racking inspection form comes in. Rather than having some optimistic and whimsical notion for a New Year’s resolution, a warehouse racking inspection checklist means you have something solid that you can use to achieve a measurable goal: a safer warehouse.

Beyond the temporal significance of committing to greater warehouse safety as part of a New Year’s resolution, it also makes sense from a business perspective. During Christmas, your warehouse likely went through quite the ordeal, with your racking systems clogged up with all that extra Christmas stock.

It’s entirely possible that your storage systems were damaged during the chaos of Christmas. More than that, it’s entirely possible that, while you were very careful at the time, you still managed to miss one particular piece of damaged racking. Mistakes like this shouldn’t happen, but the fact is they often do — especially during Christmas.

Racking Inspection Forms Make Warehouse Safety Consistent

A racking inspection form helps ensure that your warehouse inspections are regular and systematised. Without one, it’s easy to find yourself checking the same section of racking twice while missing another section of racking altogether.

Our warehouse racking inspection checklist is designed precisely so this doesn’t happen. By using a table that breaks down each part of a racking system, you can check every piece of each section of racking against your checklist. You can then use the checklist to note down exactly where you found each section of racking.

Doing so means you spend exactly the amount of time you need to spend inspecting your racking: no more, no less.

You Can Never Be Too Well Trained…

Our warehouse racking checklist is designed to be as user-friendly as possible. Even still, we’d highly recommend racking inspection training to help you effectively use your checklist. Our racking inspection training will give you the skills necessary to perform checks that are quicker and more accurate.

Whether it’s for just you or for your whole staff, the benefits of good training can’t be understated. It’s why business writer Obinna Ekezie believes that “your success starts with more frequent employee training.”

…And an Outsider’s Opinion Doesn’t Hurt Either!

Getting an expert from outside your business to come check your racking isn’t just a good idea; it’s recommended by HSE. Not having a SEMA approved racking inspector take a look at your racking at least once a year means running counter to HSE’s advice. According to the new CDM regulations, this means that should the worst happen and someone is injured or killed in your warehouse due to unsafe racking, you’re likely to be legally responsible.

Making sure your warehouse safety has a racking inspection by a SEMA approved inspector at least once a year (alongside regular racking inspections from trained staff, using our free racking inspection checklist) means that you have a New Year’s resolution you can keep.

Learning how to play the violin is all well and good, but this New Year, consider a practical and useful resolution that you can measure. That way, you might just wind up being one of the 8% who sticks to their New Year’s resolution in 2017.

Download our free racking inspection form to get your 2017 off to a great start!

How Safe Has Your Warehouse Been This Year?

Warehouse

The end of the year is a great time to look back. This applies to your warehouse, too

Is 2016 the worst year of all time? Probably not. It’s been a bad year, sure, but there are many reasons why it’s been a great year. So what about your warehouse? Has 2016 been kind to it or not?

To answer that question, we’d recommend a visit from our SEMA approved racking inspector. However, we’d also recommend using our free pallet racking safety checklist, as well as a few other things. Here’s what to look out for and how to discover whether 2016 has been a wonderful or woeful year for your warehouse.

1. Use HSE’s Green, Amber and Red System

Before you inspect your warehouse, you need to have a system in place so you know what you’re looking for. HSE recommends a simple traffic light system. Green risk means safe; amber risk means that something needs to be repaired or fixed as soon as possible; red risk means something needs to be repaired immediately and that the racking system needs to be offloaded.

2. Make Sure You and Your Staff Have Had Pallet Racking Inspection Training

As well as recommending an annual racking inspection from a SEMA approved racking inspector, HSE also recommends “regular” racking inspections from “technically competent” staff. To make sure your staff are “technically competent”, we’d recommend pallet racking inspection training from a SEMA approved racking inspector as well. Our racking inspection training course comes with a long list of recommendations for businesses of all kinds across the UK.

3. Use Our Pallet Racking Safety Checklist

Our pallet racking safety checklist is the best for a number of reasons. It’s been written by a SEMA approved racking inspector, it’s easy to use and it comes in a simple PDF format. Before you begin reviewing your warehouse, make sure you check out our free racking inspection checklist template.

4. Identify Each Type of Damage

Once you and your staff have received racking inspection training, you will know that damage comes in different forms and that each type of damage requires a different action (something which we’ll get to later). As a result, you need to start by learning how to categorise damage properly, so it can be properly dealt with. We have a resource on damage types for your reference.

5. Inspect Each Part of Your Racking Individually, Then Consider the Whole Thing

Our racking inspection checklist is laid out so that your can inspect each piece of your racking in a systematised way.

Start with the upright post. Consider the front base plate and the rear base plate.
Then, inspect the frame brace and the column guard.
Next, consider the condition of your beam and of its safety lock.

Do this for all of the pallet racking in the warehouse and note the location of each item of pallet racking.

6. Write a Comprehensive List of “Actions Required”

According to HSE, green risk means “requiring surveillance only”, amber risk means “requiring action as soon as possible” and red risk means “requiring immediate action”. The important thing to note, however, is that this is not the whole story. This is only an intentionally vague beginning.

The “actions required” section of your template should be filled in with specifics. Does the item in question need repair? If so, what kind of repair? Does it need replacing? If so, with what? How soon does this need to be done by?

7. Don’t be Afraid to Ask for Help

We’ve already mentioned that your staff should definitely have received pallet racking inspection training from a SEMA approved racking inspector before using our racking system inspection checklist. We’ve also already mentioned that HSE recommends a racking inspection from a SEMA approved racking inspector at least once a year.

However, the important thing to note there is “at least”. In other words, there’s no harm in asking for two or more racking inspections by a SEMA approved inspector in one year, especially if you’re worried or unsure about something.

In fact, if you suspect that your racking is damaged, Regulation 6 of The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 also recommends an inspection from an expert. This is a general piece of maintenance advice that applies to racking and any other kind of workplace equipment.

Conclusion

Hopefully, with our six-point guide, you’ll be able to give your warehouse a thorough review to see how 2016 has treated it. Still, if you’re at all uncertain, be sure to remember point seven and contact Storage Equipment Experts today!

Give your warehouse a proper review with our free pallet racking safety checklist and a visit from our SEMA approved racking inspector.

What will Brexit Mean for Warehouse Safety Laws?

Warehouse Safety Laws

With a new Prime Minister at the helm, the government is going to have to spend a lot of time deciding what EU regulations the UK are going to follow and what ones they aren’t. And all of this could have a big impact on warehouse safety laws.

The EU, SEMA, HSE, and Storage Equipment Experts have had an intimate relationship over the last few years, with each one influencing the other. As a result of this four-way dialogue, warehouse racking inspections and racking inspection experts have become an integral part of warehouse safety.

Now that the UK has decided to leave the European Union, this relationship has the potential to change. Though just because something can change, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will. Theresa May has made it clear that her Brexit strategy will be to steady the ship, not rock the boat. Once again though, just because someone says they’ll do something, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will.

So what exactly is stopping May from rewriting the HSE rulebook in the wake of Brexit?

Warehouse Racking Inspections are Key to the UK’s Survival Outside the EU

There are several reasons that rest of the world wants to trade with the UK, even outside of the EU, and one of them is our high safety standards. The UK has a lower workplace fatality rate than any other country in the EU. Safety standards like that are not just a good thing for workers and for workers’ rights activists; it’s good for business. In fact, it’s great for business. OSHA, the US government’s health and safety board, calculates that for every dollar spent on safety businesses can save up to six dollars.

Though not everyone agrees that all EU regulation is a good thing, and that’s precisely why campaigners like Boris Johnson argued that we should leave, and why — in the end — they won. However, even the most ardent Brexiteers don’t want the British workplaces to return to a pre-1974 era when there were 86% more workplace fatalities than there are today. The kind of deregulation Brexiteers want to see is the kind that will give the UK a stronger position in the global market, not a weaker one.

For those reasons, it’s highly unlikely that Theresa May will change many, or any, of the laws regarding warehouse and racking safety. The HSE’s relationship with SEMA and Storage Equipment Experts can remain strong without the EU’s influence. Moreover, it’s very difficult to say exactly how much influence the EU has (or rather had) over HSE in the first place. The EU writes directives, and EU countries have to enforce those directives. Though countries can also make transposition notes and, after years of amending the original EU directive, it’s hard to say whether the eventual law is a British one or a European one.

It’s true that SEMA and the EU have had a mutually beneficial relationship in the past. As a member of the European Federation for Materials Handling (FEM), SEMA has worked with other EU countries and organisations to discuss the future of health and safety within Europe. Even outside of the EU, SEMA could still play a big role in this organisation. Though the FEM is heavily associated with the EU, it is not the EU itself. The UK and SEMA still maintain an enviable health and safety record; Brexit has not changed that.

Even if SEMA were to leave to the FEM, it still would not necessarily be a bad thing. Over the past few years, SEMA and HSE’s relationship has become stronger and — outside the EU — it has the potential to grow even more. With HSE continuing to cut its funding, to strip back its operations, they have been looking for other organisations to fill the gap. With the EU gone, HSE will likely be looking to SEMA to help them craft future HSE codes, something which they have talked about in the past.

Post-Brexit, Racking Inspection Experts Need to Lead the Way

Warehouse racking inspections from racking inspection experts — specifically SEMA approved racking inspectors — have long been HSE’s secret weapon for maintaining warehouse safety. With the EU no longer under the influence of EU directives, SEMA’s definition of racking safety, and the manner in which they chose to train their racking inspectors, will become more important to HSE than ever before.

HSE, and British workplace safety in general, works best when different organisations work together towards a common goal. With regards to warehouse safety, this means HSE and SEMA working together. With the EU out of the picture, SEMA’s voice will become louder, not quieter. At Storage Equipment Experts, we welcome the leading role than SEMA will play in the future of post-Brexit warehouse safety. Our SEMA approved racking inspector will continue to deliver the best racking inspection training course in the UK as well as the highest quality of warehouse racking inspections.

Contact Storage Equipment Experts today for warehouse racking inspections from the racking inspection experts who are always up to date on the latest changes to British health and safety law.

Responsible Business Practices Applied to the Warehouse

Responsible Business Submit Practices

This year’s Responsible Business Summit saw some of the UK’s leading CEOs come together to talk about safe and sustainable business, so what did we learn about racking inspection training?

The Responsible Business Summit (RBS) is an annual event where leading business people from across Europe come to discuss safe and sustainable business. The safety aspect was especially important as 2016’s event was sponsored by the Institution of Occupational Health and Safety (IOSH), one of the UK’s biggest health and safety organisations.

Racking Inspection Experts, HSE, and Supply Chain Safety

Every business person has their own opinion on how best to make the global supply chain safer, and we’re no different. In fact, we’ve spoken at length about how important racking inspection experts and HSE are to supply chain safety. That is our opinion and, at this year’s Responsible Business Summit, many influential business people expressed theirs.

Nigel Sizer (president of the Rainforest Alliance), Mark Robertson (from ICTI CARE), Shelley Frost (executive director of policy at IOSH), and Dr Kirstie McIntyre (from HP inc) all weighed in on how they thought supply chains could be improved. Safety, sustainability, and fairness were all key themes in their talks and it was widely agreed that all of those things could be improved alongside profits.

We have always championed the idea that a safer and more sustainable supply chain isn’t just good for moral reasons; it’s good for financial reasons as well. Safety and sustainability are heavily linked, and when a business is safe and sustainable, it tends to make more money. Regular pallet rack inspections and racking inspection training performed by a racking inspection expert are a great way to start making your supply chain smoother, safer, and more sustainable.

What Can Sustainable Businesses Learn from Racking Inspection Experts and Racking Inspection Training?

In an op-ed for The Guardian, business writer Aishwarya Nair argued that ”sustainability must join health and safety as a core business value”. She cited the long uphill battle that those concerned about workplace safety faced during a different era 50 years when the issue was not seen as an issue at all. Today, “safety first” isn’t just some glib business mantra: people really mean it. Safety is central to many businesses and a lack of safety can make a business look really outdated.
This same attitude was echoed at the RBS when representatives from four brands, including Timberland and Willmott Dixon, spoke about how sustainability has been integrated into their businesses. By making it a core business value, like safety, employees are encouraged to air concerns about sustainability issues the business might have in the same way they might air concerns about safety issues.

We strongly believe in employees being allowed to voice their opinions on safety. That’s why we offer racking inspection training by racking inspection experts. HSE recommend a visit from a SEMA approved inspector once every year, but they also recommend more regular inspections from staff. Giving your employees racking inspection training helps to give them the knowledge and the confidence to speak insightfully and authoritatively about racking safety issues your warehouse may have.
The Responsible Business Summit has taught us that though companies may have many different approaches to creating safer, fairer, and more sustainable business models, this need not be a bad thing. Combining ideas through listening to the experience of other business people can help all businesses to develop. More often than not, businesses can work together in order to achieve better things. This is precisely what we believe in and precisely why we help other businesses to be safer with SEMA approved rack inspections and racking inspection training.

Develop your business into something safer and more sustainable with pallet rack inspection from the foremost racking inspection experts in the UK.

5 Reasons Why a Safe Warehouse is Essential for Trade

Safe Warehouse

Good Trade Depends on Good Warehouses and a Safe Warehouse is the Best Kind of Warehouse with the Business Show 2016 and World Fair Trade Day both happening this month, all eyes are on small businesses to see how they can make the world a better place. At the heart of many good businesses, there is usually an element of altruism. Whether it’s because you want to provide the people with world-class whiskey or whether it’s because you want to provide the people with world-class coffee, good businesses aim to make things better.

We believe that the best way businesses can make things better is to make things safer. There are many reasons why a safe warehouse is essential to trade, but here are just five.

1. Safe Warehouses are a Legal Requirement

We’ll start with the obvious statement that nobody wants to trade with a company that is breaking the law. However, with regards to warehouse safety, this is a mistake that some big companies are still making. Anheuser-Busch, the multinational beer giant who should probably know better, recently paid $150,000 to OSHA after failing to adhere to basic aisle and pallet racking safety standards.

The immediate cost of this huge company breaking the law is the aforementioned enormous fine, but the indirect costs are also pretty terrible. After all…

2. Warehouse Safety is a Huge Part of Your Business’ Image

Breaking the law can make your company look bad, but bending the law right up to breaking point doesn’t look good either. A famous sports retailer in the UK has been accused of pushing its employees to the edge after it emerged that ambulance services had been called to their warehouse more than 80 times over a two year period.

The company has not yet been accuse of breaking any laws, but all press is certainly not good press in this instance.

If your draconian managing style is pushing your employees too hard, and pushing away potential traders as a result, then maybe it’s time to try something different…

3. Racking Inspection Training is a Huge Motivator for Employees

Rather than looking at warehouse safety as something that businesses are obliged to do because of the law, or for fear of looking bad, warehouse safety should be seen as an opportunity to rally your employees around a common goal.

Racking inspection training is one of the many ways to get employees motivate about health and safety. Training of any kind can help employees to feel valued, respected, and important members of the team. However, racking inspection training has the added benefit of doing all those things while making your warehouse safer.

4. Warehouse Safety Makes Trade Easier

What kind of warehouse do you want? An efficient one full of highly skilled and highly motivated employees helping you to trade as quickly and safely as possible? Or a slow warehouse filled with underskilled and undervalued employees who are forced to navigate a dangerous warehouse in order to help a company that they don’t care about?

When you put it that way, the answer is obvious. Warehouse safety makes things easier. When employees are not trained enough with regards to safety, they are not confident, they are not motivated, and they work less. All of this slows the pace of warehouse work and, worse still, makes warehouse work unsafe. Accidents slow the pace of work even further by de-motivating employees and the negative feedback loop continues.

When employees are train well enough, they have the confidence to work faster and safer. Employees who work in a faster and safer warehouse are more likely to feel motivated. This isn’t just conjecture. It’s all part of the psychology of workplace safety which HSL, the government funded research branch of HSE, has been exploring.

5. A Business with a Safe Warehouse is a Reliable Business

Signing contracts with trade partners is about long-term investment, and nothing says long-term investment like a safe warehouse. Moreover, racking inspection training and warehouse safety training in general are further examples of a long-term investment. If you want any business to trade with you, a secure future is essential, which is precisely why warehouse safety is essential too.

Secure the future of your business with expert racking inspections and pallet racking inspection courses from the UK’s best SEMA-approved racking inspectors.

An Introduction to Warehouse Safety

warehouse safety

An Introduction to Warehouse Safety: What is it? Who does it apply to? And why does warehouse safety matter?

At Storage Equipment Experts, we talk a lot about warehouse safety, and that’s mainly because we’re so passionate about it. However, one thing that we’ve not yet done is explain warehouse safety to the uninitiated. To us, it’s second nature, but to many people it remains a mystery. Some people might even wonder why warehouse safety even matters.

Warehouses are big structures and they have the potential to employ many people, as many as 40,000 in the case of some Amazon warehouses. With such scale and such size, the potential for accidents is equally huge. 40,000 people running around a building that size with no safety precautions would be complete chaos!

And yet, before HSE and the introduction of warehouse safety procedures, that’s exactly what happened. It was only after the tragic Flixborough chemical plant explosion in 1974 that HSE was introduced. The 24 needless deaths were a wake-up call, and since then warehouses have become much safer places.

Warehouse Safety and Pallet Racking Inspection Training

We have long believed that rack inspection training is essential to the maintenance of any warehouse. If you have a small business, then you need pallet racking inspection training. And if you have a big business… you also need pallet racking inspection training!

Any business with a warehouse can benefit from it. Warehouses are, in essence, nothing more than vessels for large storage systems. The larger and more ambitious your storage system, the better trained your staff should be to perform racking inspections.

Pallet racking inspections and pallet racking inspection training are a big part of warehouse safety. They protect your warehouse from damage and protect your staff from harm, just as much as hard-hats and rack protectors do. In fact, rack protectors are often misused, and so it is vital that employers and employees recognise the importance of expert rack inspections and rack inspection training as a preventative measure.

At Storage Equipment Experts, we have always been happy to supply our customers with expert rack inspections, delivered by a SEMA approved inspector, to warehouses across the UK. Though we are also passionate about providing our readers, and the general public, with knowledge about rack inspections and warehouse safety…

An Introduction to Warehouse Safety

Warehouse safety has a long history, but we also believe in the future of warehouse safety. That’s why we are keen to spread as much knowledge about the topic as possible. We believe in creating safer warehouses across the UK through spreading awareness, but also through our services. Our expert rack inspections and rack inspection training are perfect for businesses of all sizes. Whether your warehouse is a concrete jungle like Amazon’s or just a cozy corner to store your stock, we have you covered.

We are in the business of making warehouses as efficient, useful, and safe as possible. That’s why our expert rack inspections and pallet racking inspection training courses are carried out by a SEMA approved inspector. It’s also why we deliver our services to any business in the UK.

Contact Storage Equipment Experts today! HSE recommend that SEMA approved inspectors perform racking inspections because they’re experts, and we couldn’t agree more!

What is it like to Work in a Warehouse?

work in a warehouse UK

Warehouses help to produce thousands of jobs, and good ones can produce thousands of careers, though not every warehouse is the same. What it’s like to work in a warehouse depends entirely on the warehouse itself.

A Bad Warehouse: A Lack of Racking Safety, A Lack of Planning, and A Lack of Respect

Bad working environments in warehouses are a serious problem in the UK, as this article by Simon Goodley makes clear. In the warehouse he writes about, staff are mistreated, corners are cut, and trust is non-existent. All of this can be both the cause of and the result of bad safety standards.

When employee motivation is low, when they do not care about the company they work for, then they are more inclined to take risks when it comes to safety. Likewise, if there is little safety regulation for employees working long hours in a potentially dangerous situation, this will have a negative effect on their morale.

This is a genuine concern for HSE, which is why they are delivering courses by psychologists on how negative behaviour from employees can increase the danger. In a follow-up course, they are explaining how positive behaviour can create a safer workplace.

If the bad attitudes in a warehouse are not address, then the machinery and pallet racking systems will bear the brunt of it. Soon, you are working in a warehouse that is dangerous through misuse. And once again, the same is true of the employer.

Their bad attitude towards their employees can mean that a warehouse is unsafe because racking safety was not build into the design of the building. This sends a message to employees to ignore racking safety and so the same cycle continues.

A Good Warehouse: Regular Racking Inspections, Racking Inspection Training, and a Respect for Safety and Staff

Regular racking inspections from a SEMA approved racking inspector have two effects. The first is that you can ensure the safety of your pallet racking and the second is that employees feel valued because time and money are being spent on their safety. Employees will return this respect with proper use and, in the long run, a better work rate.

HSE recommend an “expert inspection” from a SEMA approved racking inspector once every 12 months, but you can never be too careful. This is why racking inspection training is another way to guarantee that your warehouse is a positive and safe working environment. As with the inspections, employees feel valued and invested in and, with proper management, they will return this investment by doing good work.

Warehouse working can be a great thing, but as with any career, this is only true if employees and employers respect each other, the business, and the rules of safety.

Make your warehouse a great place to warehouse work with racking inspection training and a pallet racking inspection from the best SEMA approved racking inspector in the UK.