I’m Marty and this is Warehouse and Operations as a Career. Last week we were in the Midwest, we had the
opportunity to visit a couple of different types of distribution facilities and
speak with several associates, Unloaders, Selectors and forklift drivers, I had
a really good conversation with a sanitation lead. It’s great to see all the passion and
professionalism, I guess it’s the word pride that I’m looking for. Anyway, I enjoyed visiting with all these
professionals. This week I’m over in the
Southwest and visiting the Production and Manufacturing sides of the
industry. No manner where I go or what
part of our industry, I’m getting to look at I so enjoy getting to visit with
the employees. There’s a lot of up and
coming success stories out there! Keep
up the great work ladies and gentlemen, I know it appreciated by your
management teams and it’ll get you to those goals, keep working the plan! Oh, saying that reminded me of making money,
that’s why we’re all working in the first place right? So, I’ve mentioned, a couple of times
probably, another podcast I listen too called Unlocking the secret of living
rich with Cindy B Brown. As I’ve said,
I’m not affiliated with it at all, but you should check out her last episode
titled #91 Creative Savings Strategies.
Talk about making money, her tips last week can actually increase our
net, in our pocket money at the end of each year! Be sure to check it out if you have the time. I strayed again, so let’s talk about
Operations for the next few minutes!
these trips involved Safety, instructing Safety, investigating reports and just
visiting with Safety managers or those responsible for loss and prevention. WAOC received a short message, a question really,
I guess, it kind of fits with my recent travels so I wanted to share parts of
it with you today. It starts by saying
I’ve really enjoyed your recent episodes on all the different positions in
warehousing, I myself started unloading railcars, moved to be a runner, then a
receiver and now I am a forklift driver, I love my old Toyota counterbalance
side shifter. I understand the
importance of safety and I pay attention to what I’m doing but those everyday
safety meetings and repeating the same things over and over again… Lets be honest
it’s a waste of time. It’s not just my
manager, it’s every company it seems.
Shouldn’t we just take a course, sign off on it and go to work every day? It’s important but most people just quit
want to thank you for writing us, and you’d be surprised how often I hear or
see the same thing. And I think that’s
exactly why it has to be brought up every day.
I mean it has to be interesting, it has to cover real life situations
that pertain to our individual positions and I believe we have to be able to
relate to it. I’d love to hear from a
few of our listeners that are responsible for delivering those start-up and
safety meetings. Maybe a Supervisor or
Manager, maybe a Safety director, how do you keep your associates engaged? Send us some of your secrets to [email protected] and we’ll share your thoughts with
heard me talk about the importance of a good Near Miss Program, I think these
programs can solve all these opportunities.
By us employees being the ones observing a near miss, something we’ve
seen in our aisles or on our docks and documenting it it’ll give our
supervisors a real-life situation to share with our whole team. The little things are of course a quick fix,
and the larger issues can be passed on to our company’s safety committees or
upper management to get corrected. As we’ve learned, if its documented it
happened, it has to be addressed to some degree, and anything that’s not
documented, we’ll it never really happened or happens at all! What better way to keep a topic or
conversation interesting than to participate in it right?
believed the only way to keep a recurring topic interesting, or for it to have
any daily value at all is that it needs to be second nature to us as
humans. It has to be our culture, on the
fore front of our minds, kind of intertwined in our daily routines. We wake up, use the restroom, think of
breakfast, go to work, probably take the same route to work every day, plan for
lunch, get off, enjoy the family and go to bed.
Very routine but very interesting.
Oh, there’s other things like school for the kiddos, their soccer,
football and baseball games, paying bills etc. but it’s all in the forefront of
our minds. I think we find it
interesting because we’ve built it into our daily lives. All that is part of our culture now, Safety
has to be a part of that culture, and it has to be a part of our work culture
too. I think all the things that are
discussed at our startup and safety meetings can really enforce that Safety
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_culture
You know I’m a look it up kind of guy, states Safety culture is the collection of the beliefs,
perceptions and values that employees share in relation to risks within
an organization, such as a workplace or community.[1][2] Safety culture is a part of organizational
culture, and has been described in
Notice the word employees,
that’s us! It goes on to mention that
safety culture is part of an organizational culture. That’s our employers being committed to us
employees and having great policies in place, a good solid process.
I agree that things can get
routine, especially our safety topics but as I’m always mentioning, we
employees can participate in them and make them much more interesting. After all we or have seen an example of every
topic our manager has ever spoken too.
What a great way of getting noticed, helping them get their message
across to our peers. We all know the rules
and we know why their important but occasionally we go around them, and then
there’s incidents and consequences.
Here’s a great example of
just that. I heard about an experienced
forklift operator needing the top pallet of a 3 stack, you know, where there’s
3 partial pallets stacked on top of each other and he was retrieving it off the
top rack at his facility. Instead of
retrieving or lifting all three he chose to try and lift just the top one. Of course, this positioned his freight guard
only inches from the ceiling so when he started backing up with the pallet the
guard sheared off a sprinkler head. If
you’ve ever seen a sprinkler head go off you know that’s a pure mess, an
expensive mess. You’ll lose product,
maybe even mess up the electronics within the lift. And that water can be nasty, its been in
those pipes for a long time! Its hard to
apply the word accident there. He knew
better, it was a stated rule not to do it, everyone around him knew it. Yet it happened. If it had been the culture to never make a
lift like that it may have never happened.
Those 2 minutes saved cost thousands of dollars, a whole lot of time
cleaning it up and a record in his employee and safety files.
And here’s a good one. So, an order selector was at a slot, off of
his triple jack and selecting 9 cases from the slot. By all indications and witness statements he
was pulled over to the side of the aisle as he should’ve been. Another selector, in a bit of a hurry, tried
squeezing by him, a bit too close to his last pallet and nudged the other machine
forward squeezing the first gentleman’s leg between his jack housing and the
upright. Luckily, he wasn’t permanently
injured or disabled, this could have been a bad incident. Again, its hard for me to use the word
accident here. The second selector knew
better, he felt really bad about it, he was just hurrying and didn’t follow the
rules or do what he knew to do. Would a
strong culture of safety prevent this one?
I feel of course it would have, the thought process would have been to
wait and moving forward would have never entered his mind.
Check out episode 31 of the The
Safety Pro Podcast with Blaine Hoffman.
Its titled A process to change workplace safety culture, I think you’ll
enjoy it, I know I learned a lot from it!
meeting important? It’s our health and
safety we need to be considering. Its
our peers and teammates health and safety, and it’s our company’s investment in
us as employees. Its our responsibility,
and its our job. I urge each of us to do
our part, be a part of our safety teams and coach others, get them to commit to
a strong safety culture at your facility.
culture, there’s so many, here’s two that I witnessed just in the last 2
weeks. I loved this one. Every time the floor Supervisor meets one of
his department’s employees there’s a little fist bump. Walking to the breakroom, meeting in the
aisles, every time they pass each other.
Its like a greeting, every time they’re within arm’s reach. I asked an employee about it and was told it
means I’ve got this; I’m committed to my task and to do it safely. That’s a strong safety culture, its first on everyone’s
mind. I was over at the Distribution
Training Center last Saturday. Just
stopping in, taking care of some reporting.
An associate was shutting down for the day and locking everything
up. He went over to the equipment and
checked out the chargers and the plugs on the units. He then proceeded to check all the doors,
docks and gates. I asked why he took the
time to check on the equipment and all the doors that we hadn’t used any of
them? His reply was that he wanted to
make sure the equipment was charged and ready for Monday and he’d just
rechecked the docks and doors just to be sure.
He said we have each other’s backs, and I wanted to make sure the plate
was set for the men and women Monday morning.
Again, it was second nature, a part of his team’s routine. If I hadn’t asked the question, he’d have
Safety is all our jobs. We talk a lot about it here at WAOC, how its
our first priority, our responsibility, and how effective it can be. It’ll help reduce cost, downtime and safe
lives. Being educated in safety will get
us noticed by our management teams too, I hope that education is a part of all
our plans, both short term and long terms plans!
A few things we can each do
- Always use our safety equipment and PPE’s! If we need help picking up a box, lets go get
someone to help us. Don’t try scooting
that pallet with your foot, go get a pallet jack. If the machine we’re operating has 10 different
guards, use all 10 guards. They are
there for a reason, even if we’re not working at that particular station make
sure there in the proper place! We may be asked to wear steel toe footwear,
were being asked because the risk of an injury is present. Keep that safety vest and safety goggles on
if we’re suppose to use them. Again,
it’s probably been determined we need them.
Use your Near Miss program! There’s no better way to identify the hazardsaround us. If your facility doesn’t have such a program, bring it up, put it
together for your supervisor, at least suggest it. You’ll be surprised at his or her response I
bet.
Keep our work areas clean. Keep our pallets stacked at the proper heightand separate the good wood from the bad.
This one is easy, and you’d be surprised how many little incidents occur
because of poor housekeeping.
An inspection list. I’ve always used an inspection list. Just a little reminder to check things likethe dock plates in my area. The hydraulics
or the pneumatic action rods, or the dock lights. My list keeps me from getting lazy or in a
rut. Keeping our work areas clean and in
good working order is hard work!
Communicate! If you’re a supervisor, communicate to your teams. And if you’re an employee communicate with
your management and your teammates. As
we’ve learned here at WAOC, communication is success!
5 things off the top of my head. There
are literally 100’s of other things we can do to help keep our workplace safe
and everyone healthy. It’s a team
effort, or a safety culture if you will!
I hope we’ve answered the question of why safety is such a big part of our
shifts and maybe given you a few ideas on how to improve and implement that
safety culture at your facility. I hope
you take a few minutes and check out the two other podcast I mentioned earlier,
I’m not affiliated with either, I just learn from them and you can too! I hope to run into you on either our Facebook
or Twitter feeds this week where we can be found @whseandops. Until next week, lets all pick 1 safety
statement for each day next week and share it with our teams and peers, I bet
you’ll see that culture taking hold and start growing! Be safe out their ladies and gentlemen!
