safety in workplace

Tips for Keeping Your Shipping & Receiving Center Running Safely

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shipping receiving safety

While OSHA does not have specific safety regulations for shipping and handling centers, there are many aspects of the safety procedures that apply to these staff. Any employee that is exposed to hazards or risks should be protected to the extent possible on the job site. Consider these employees as you create workplace procedures and protocols.

Some Common Threats

This type of work requires frequent lifting and moving of incoming and outgoing materials. Back and muscle injury is easily incurred.

Use of equipment such as dollies, forklifts or hand trucks are also common. Accidents can occur, particularly with potential injuries to appendages.

Stacked packages or out of reach materials also produce a falling object hazard.

Additionally, tools for cutting, packaging, and strapping materials also create risk to staff in shipping and receiving.

Shipping & Receiving Safety Tips

It may be time to add some additional regulations for you staff in your shipping centers and warehouses.

Here’s a checklist that may be a helpful start point or reference.

  1. Make sure the warehouse area is clean and free of clutter and unnecessary items.
  2. Always use necessary equipment for heavy, large or bulky materials.
  3. When using cutting tools, always cut away from yourself and others and make sure that tools are closed or covered when not in use.
  4. Be careful when stacking or storing materials at height. Ensure the base of the stack is stable by placing heavy items closest to the floor with lighter items on top.
  5. When loading trucks, make the heaviest point of the load forward on the truck axle for stability.
  6. Feel free to take two trips whenever necessary rather than piling a load too high.
  7. When in doubt, ask for help with materials and work with one or more people to get the job done.
  8. Be sure to position materials on shelving in a way that fall hazards are reduced – far enough back from the edge.

These tips are generalized considerations for many shipping & handling centers. However, to ensure the safety and well-being of your staff the manager should conduct a safety audit of your specific workspace. Pay attention to any special considerations and create policies to keep your team safe. For more safety tips like these, view other articles on the ResponsAble blog!

Why Substance Abuse is a Manager’s Problem

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substance abuse

Is substance abuse really a consideration for you as a manager of a professional work environment? Here’s a scary fact you may not have considered… nearly half of all workplace injuries are traced back to substance use. Drug and alcohol abuse on the job is more prevalent than we may think. Or maybe you know, but just haven’t been educated on the implications in your work environment.

Alcohol and drug use is dangerous for a multitude of reasons. Substances inhibit motor skills and cognitive functioning, give a false sense of confidence, impair judgement, decrease efficiency, and negatively effects workplace performance.

As a manager, the cost of substance abuse in your workplace is too high.

So how do you recognize potential substance abuse among your employees?

Common Signs of Employee Substance Abuse

So how do you recognize potential substance abuse among your employees? If you’re not being attentive to the possibility of substance abuse, it can be easy to miss. Don’t make the mistake of assuming you would know if this was an issue among your employees. There are a variety of reasons an individual may engage in substance abuse, and while sometimes it may be obvious, other times it may not be the employee you expect. Here are a few behaviors to take note of and investigate substance abuse if noticed:

  • Consistent or extreme lethargy
  • Frequent breaks or unaccounted for disappearances
  • Erratic behavior or mood swings
  • Inconsistency in hygiene, appearance, or performance
  • Frequent avoidable mistakes
  • Tardiness or failure to show up to work

How to Address Workplace Substance Abuse

Evaluate your culture- alienation and a lack of resources to address emotional life events leads to a higher volume of workplace substance abuse. Offer help to employees and work to create an environment where they know they have resources and support. Some examples could include availability to counseling, team building, supervisor check-ins, bereavement days, etc.

Proper Supervision- A surprising number of staff report that using substances on the job is not as hard as you may think. Increasing supervision is the first line of defense against onsite drinking and drug use.

Safety Training- Use a weekly meeting time to educate employees on the dangers and liability of substance use at work. Make employees aware that you’re serious about safety and teach them about the long-term ramifications of their actions.

Substance Testing- Implement testing at whatever frequency you feel necessary in your workplace. You are within your legal rights to implement these policies in your workplace. Drug and blood alcohol testing are obvious deterrents to use.

Interested in substance use training in your work place? ResponsAble would be happy to come and teach your employees about the dangers and liabilities of workplace use. Call (225) 753-1909 or email us for more information.

Serious About Plant Safety? What About The Office?

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office safety

For most employers, the bulk of safety emphasis goes toward the shop floor, production, manufacturing, etc.  Machines moving products rapidly around human beings just demands our collective prevention attention.  But what about the office? 

We tend to look at the office environment long enough to see everybody’s going home with all their fingers and toes; it’s all good. 

It’s Not All Good; They Slipping, Tripping and Falling All Over the Place

The Center for Disease Control, CDC, reports office workers are up to 2.5 times more likely to suffer an injury from a fall than non-office workers.  What?!?!?

Yep, office workers get lulled into safety complacency just like anyone will when they don’t recognize the hazards.  There are many potential slip, trip and fall hazards in a typical office setting.

  • • Wet or slippery floors
  • • Objects on floors such as open drawers, electrical cords, carpeting, items left in walkways
  • • Poor visibility or lighting
  • • Use of furniture in place of a proper latter to reach elevated items
  • • Unsafe or unstable footwear

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome anyone? 

If your office workers are careful to avoid all those slip, trip and fall hazards, how are they doing with the long hours on the computer? 

Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS, data reveals musculoskeletal disorders, MSD’s, account for over $ 15 billion in worker’s compensation costs annually. 

MSD’s are associated with many of the type of activities common in office work. 

  • • Sitting still for long periods of time
  • • Poor posture for long durations; improper ergonomics
  • • Repetitive small motor movement such as typing
  • • Lack of work breaks

Lifting Not So Heavy Loads

Poor lifting technique can lead to injury even with relatively light loads.  The act of lifting is intrinsically hard on our back, neck and shoulders especially if we use improper form.  Additional risk comes for people who are not physically fit or have prior injuries that may re-occur with even a small strain. 

Common causes of lifting injuries

  • • Lifting something that is too heavy
  • •Not asking for help
  • • Bending from the waste instead of squatting and using legs
  • • Grabbing with finger tips
  • • Twisting while carrying a heavy item

The risk factors described above are by no means an exhaustive list but simply some highlights to raise awareness around office safety.  The injuries and risk associated with the office environment just don’t tend to get our full attention when stacked up next to heavy industrial settings; but it should. 

Put the same Safety, Health and Environmental zeal into protecting your office workers as you do for any employee.  Make sure your training and accountability for the office staff is on par with any other role but match the curriculum and expectations to the office threats. 

Ensuring your office operates safely is right for your employees and right for your business.  If you want a safe plant, you need a safe office.

4 Factors Safety Professionals Apply to International Expansion

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Safety professionals are partners in the company’s corporate leadership so when a company expands beyond their borders, it is these professionals you can trust.

Their expertise and experience are what encourages companies to grow, both locally and internationally. Without safety professionals, the risks of injuries rise, the general productivity of a company decreases, and the diversity in experience and knowledge disappears.

Local, smaller businesses tend strive to employ laborers that are in closer proximity to the business, however when expanding internationally, workers with varying backgrounds in language, culture, and homeland are integrated into the staffing selections. There is value in the advancement that is made with incorporating diversity and in these situations, it is the safety professionals that oversee the development of the employees.

Overall benefit of international expansion:

The opportunity to expand a business drastically increases when companies establish new residences globally. Safety professionals play a significant role in the founding and cultivating of industries both domestic and foreign.

It is a growing trend that companies have operations in several countries, which brings a new collection of challenges. Balancing an atmosphere that is progressive while maintaining a rooted foundation in the companies’ procedures is at the forefront of building a business internationally.

What to expect from the experts:

When establishing new roots in a foreign country, these professionals create a safe, stable environment for a business to grow by leading the decisions about how the business is going to function.

According to Inshpo,  a properly functioning global framework for OHS safety professionals are positioned as:

“Facilitators of a shared understanding of the different roles for the OHS Professional and the OHS Practitioner;

Key advisors, strategist and leader in fully integrating the management of OHS risk into sustainable business practice;

Skilled implementer of OHS activities and an effective OHS supporter and communicator at the site.”

Four factors OHS applies when establishing international production sites:

OHS professional organizations believe in expanding their corporations with educated and ethical standards. Investing time and energy into sites are what safety professionals are experts at, and they use these four factors as an outline on how to properly execute their workforce environment.

Question
Organizations that trust safety professionals to begin a new project know that they will ask the right questions. They are trained to be observant toward their surroundings and ensure a physically safe work environment. As leaders, they make risk evaluations, safety strategy recommendations, and are proactive in preparing the site for production. In an international setting, professionals have keen alertness to the set-up so that the company will reflect the organic structure.

Compare
Contrastingly, safety professionals do not take major risks in organizations that could have the potential to be counterproductive or deadly. They understand the complexity of a productive work environment and know that the best way to create policies and procedures is to model them after what they have learned. They do not put others, themselves, or their company at risk of dangerous physical, ethical, or economic exposure.

Discipline
Safety professionals are team players and they value their role as team captain. These professionals respect authority and do not compromise their decisions based on the relationships to others. In a situation where an employee violates policy, it is the professionals that you can trust to properly discipline the offender.

Educate
Safety professionals curate an atmosphere of safety because they apply their extensive experiences with situational safety and their ongoing education about the topic. You can trust that these professionals will not make irrational decisions but instead investigate the issue and find a well-balanced, effective solution. When placed in an international setting, professionals consider the linguistic and cultural differences. By doing this, the productivity can continue to grow because the site is a dynamic environment for the employees to thrive.

 

The benefits of the roles adopted by safety professionals ensure the quality, accuracy, and overall long-term promotion of safety standards and procedures for the corporation.

If you would like to continue this conversation, we would love to further discuss the different roles that safety professionals play. Our safety professionals are high quality, experienced employees that can add value to your organization. Click here to read more and give us a call at 225-753-1909!

 

3 Tips for Holding Weekly Safety Talks

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Safety Talks

While you may not be required by OSHA to hold regular staff meetings, it is a great idea to hold a regular staff meeting for the sake of creating a safety culture and keeping injury prevention a priority. A safe workplace operates more efficiently and protects your bottom line. More importantly, your people will thrive in a safe and healthy work environment.

We feel that short, to-the-point, “safety talks” keep safety at the forefront of workers’ minds and leads to success in accident prevention. A monthly safety meeting may be more formal and take more time to take care of business, but a weekly quick safety talk will just help drive the culture of your worksite in the right direction.

Tips for Holding a Successful Safety Talk

  • Keep it informal. It’s key to present opportunities to discuss safety in a relaxed, informal setting. Your goal here is to get workers to participate by encouraging questions and discussions to draw off of past experience. You’re not delivering a lecture and this is not a meeting employees should dread.
  • Keep it brief. Make sure these short talks are in the time frame of 10-20 minutes. You will lose your audience after 20 minutes.
  • Keep it fresh. If you’re only going to review information that’s already known over and over, you will lose your audience and they will quickly tune you out. Introduce new topics or find new angles to talk about. Approach content in fresh ways to keep your workers engaged.

Get Free Safety Talk Content from ResponsAble

Engaging your workers in consistent, concise, content-rich safety meetings will save your business money and can ultimately save lives in your workplace.

As the safety staffing experts, we want to resource you with a continual stream of new information about safety. In an effort to do this, we are sending out free monthly safety tips that you can use for your safety talks to open up conversations.

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For more information about safety staffing give us a call at 225-753-1909.

How Do You Achieve a Safety Culture?

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Safety Culture

In a healthy safety culture all personnel share the same responsibility for safe work. Management AND the labor workforce must both support the safety culture, even though they have different perspectives.

In this blog, we share the perspectives of both roles and offer a tips for working together to achieve a safety culture!

The Management Safety Perspective:

The management goal is to provide a safe workplace and maintain safe procedures. The attitude they are perceived to have is that workers should follow them or be subject to discipline.

The role of management is to:

  • Provide leadership & management support.
  • Demonstrate commitment.
  • Communicate expectations to employees.
  • Require accountability from lower levels of management.
  • Show a sense of moral and ethical concern.

To achieve a truly positive safety culture, it would mean that all personnel, regardless of position, job description, or time spent at the work site share equal responsibility in upholding safety standards and procedures to keep the entire job site safe. Management must lead by example when it comes to safety and back up their words with actions. Another key component to achieving a safety culture is to listen to feedback from the workforce on the ground. Failure to do so distances the workforce from management:

In short, the safety system should resonate with the workforce and represent their experiences and job tasks realistically through their own input. Not taking advantage of the wealth of practical knowledge that frontline workers can provide safety systems and operating procedures essentially devalues their first-hand experience and expertise, and it maintains the cultural rift between them and the managers, ensuring that frontline supervisors continue to turn a blind eye to nonstandard and potentially unsafe practices because production goals are routinely met. – Predictive Safety.

The Workforce Safety Perspective:

The labor workforce believes that discipline is less effective than pre-incident planning. The attitude they have is management should encourage laborers to work responsibly.

A common sentiment among frontline workers is that supervisors and managers show little concern for their well-being. Most of the time there is a communication issue at the heart of this misunderstanding:

Of course, managers did care, but often they did not understand the importance of expressing that care. The managers that employees felt could be trusted even if the company could not were those who “talked to people one-on-one, gathered their opinions, their concerns and ideas, and acted on them. – Predictive Safety.

On each jobsite, managers should give everyone the opportunity to be involved in safety management. All employees must be engaged to make safety the primary goal in fostering a safety culture. The role of management is to identify and empower the “safety champions”.

How Safety Professionals Help Create a Safety Culture

The role of safety professionals in creating safety culture is to be a technical expert that works alongside management and the labor workforce.

Experience proves that safety performance improves as organizations move to an “interdependent” safety culture.

In an interdependent safety culture, safety professionals are the “safety champions” that promote:

  • Leadership
  • High safety consciousness
  • Helping others/working together
  • Open reporting
  • Accountability
  • Pride in safety achievements

This type of culture creates a platform for sustainable safety performance.

Tips for Changing Behavior:

  • Remove incentives for not getting injured and create incentives for reduced risk.
  • Use mistakes to understand root cause.
  • Report, track and correct near misses more frequently.
  • Solve problems based on dialog and understanding.

This may feel like an uphill battle:

What transpires all too often is the diffusion of the message regarding safety for the simple lack of culture, but with the right approach and effective leadership an interdependent safety culture can become a reality in your organization. – Triumvirate Environmental.

Hire the Safety Staffing Experts

For qualified and experienced safety professionals that share the same safety values, hire us to do the hiring for you. Give us a call about your next project – 225-753-1909.