“Safety” means a lot of things when it comes to warehousing.

It means protecting your workers, your customers, and your goods from potential damage and injury. It means proper training on certain techniques, frequent (and occasionally awkward) team meetings about preventing accidents, and rolling out the TV for some ancient company-mandated safety video.

But what’s the end goal of all this? Is it enough for your workers to know how high to stack items or how to properly lift with their knees, or does it need to go deeper than that?

Instilling proper safety training means creating a culture of safety within your organization. By making a focus on safety part of your job culture, it can become easier for everyone – becoming just another part of the process, as opposed to an extra thing you need to focus on during your duties.

Warehouse Safety Culture

Understanding unique challenges

Not only do warehouses offer unique challenges not often faced by other industries or workplaces, they can also offer unique challenges when compared even to other warehouses due to the variety of products and items stored within them. Understanding these challenges, with a focus on the unique, specific ones your business has to face, will create a better safety culture throughout your entire workplace.

Does your team need to focus on safety when handling special items like foods or pharmaceuticals, necessitating training in the use of medical shelving or food freezer shelving? Do you frequently deal in heavier goods that need special tools? Are you often finding your pallet racking stuffed to unsafe levels? Focus on these specific issues first, and you’ll gain a better understanding of your warehouse as a whole.

Routine reviews and inspections

Nobody likes to hear the word “review” at work, but by making safety inspections a part of your regular schedule, your team will know to expect them, and you can better incorporate them into your daily routines.

Set a fairly frequent and regular schedule for safety inspections, and stick to them the best you can. Make sure to go in the same order every time – inspecting your warehouse guard rails and wire security cages one day, reviewing lifting techniques the next, and so on. This will help them feel more like a part of daily life for your team, and may actually help better instill the training and lessons to your crew.

Review what your team should be trained on

There’s an awful lot of training information out there for warehouses, some of it more helpful than others. But even the most useful training guide can outlive its welcome if it isn’t providing any new information, or at least anything your team can use.

When training or reviewing certain procedures with your team, listen for feedback as to what’s the most helpful, or what’s been covered already. A culture of safety is one that’s always evolving to keep up with the needs of your team, and sometimes that means finding new ways to train your team and keep their skills up to date.

Whatever you do, remember that a culture of safety starts from the top down – if your team knows you’re trying to keep them safe, they’ll work that much harder themselves.