Warehouse Safety

Health and Safety in a Warehouse or Retail environment must be taken seriously and appropriate measures adopted to ensure compliance with HSE legislation. This Warehouse Safety e-learning module produced by First Health and Safety incorporates all the main issues concerning safety in a warehouse environment including Fork lift tricks, pedestrian safety and working at height.

There are in excess of 2,300 injuries that require a report occurring in warehouse environments per year in the UK. When the likelihood of low reporting because of minor accidents that cause little or no real injury, this figure could be closer to 6,000 warehouse environment incidents that threaten the safety of individuals at some level every year.

This is a high level of incidents, and it probably stems from the kind of work involved, which present risks from the stacking and storage of items in high positions using mechanical devices and machinery. While most injuries in a warehouse environment are minor, on average there are 6 fatalities reported each year. Most of the fatalities happen as a result of falls from high places.

Less than 10% of the annual injuries reported are of a serious or major nature. Most of these injuries involved fractures. Some were hit by moving machinery, forklifts in most cases, and many of the injuries happened at ground level as a result of slipping on spills  or tripping over misplaced objects. Around 14% of the injuries were a result of individuals being struck by falling or moving objects.

Of the injuries that result in at least three days off work for the worker concerned, a wholly avoidable 40% involved individuals lifting or carrying objects. Proper training that is strictly enforced can certainly reduce and perhaps even come close to eliminating this statistic all together.

Providing safe working conditions in a warehouse or retail environment means adopting certain common sense principles. These include things like ensuring that workers walking in the environment are kept as far away as possible from moving vehicles. This involved in stacking or removing objects from heights always perform a safety check first by looking to see on who is below before taking action.

Other measures that can reduce accidents and injury in a warehouse or retail environment include: adopting a one-way driving system for fork lifts and other moving vehicles to reduce collisions; ensuring that all traffic routes are marked clearly and unambiguously; ensuring that traffic routes and pedestrian walk ways are as separate as possible; set and enforce a speed limit that is safe and reasonable; using reverse alarms on vehicles and taking measures to reduce or eliminate the need for reversing; enforcing the need for people on foot to wear high-visibility reflective work clothes; and ensure that all workers have been properly trained and that they attend any refresher courses on safety that become necessary.