People, Process and Culture in Health & Safety: Problem-Solving Skills Needed

There are three key aspects to warehouse health and safety: looking after people, designing processes with safety in mind, and developing a lasting safety culture. Good health and safety management, and safe working practices help keep people safe in a warehouse environment.

People

An excellent foundation to the wellbeing of people in their work is ensuring that the design of roles in the warehouse takes account of the psychological needs of individuals. This means allowing for flexible working, variety of task and location, engagement with others, empowerment and feedback from management and team members. Thoughtful management of these elements reduces stress in individuals and can increase personal productivity.

Young people in the workplace are known to be a high-risk group. Giving young people special attention helps generate early safety awareness.

Getting people involved relies on the two key elements of finding out what motivates workers best in the firm, and ensuring that engagement is attractive to everyone. This is especially true in a diverse worker population.

Processes

If you are fortunate enough to be involved in the design of any aspects of a warehouse operation, then you have a fantastic opportunity to design-out as many risks as possible and develop safe working practices in the operation right from the start. Keeping humans and machines apart as much as possible and reducing musculoskeletal disorders, caused by manual handling, should be central goals of the design process.

The manual handling of loads is one of the major causes of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD). The amount of manual handling in a warehouse can be reduced by utilising mechanical handling equipment (MHE).  Along with the design of ergonomic workstations this can provide in-built protection for people in their daily tasks. The input of the operators themselves can reap huge benefits in understanding day to day challenges.

There are, of course, many other serious risks associated with the various processes in a warehouse environment, and risk assessments will highlight the areas of an operation requiring special attention. The most common high risk areas involve slips and trips, workplace transport, working at height, electrical safety and the activities of contractors.

Health and safety culture

Strong leadership and worker engagement play a critical role in the creation of a safer warehouse operation and a lasting safety culture. Employers are required to consult with their employees, and developing a structured approach to engagement can have many benefits. Risks can be better understood when there are practitioners involved from all levels of an organisation.

Leadership in health and safety is about management behaviours that show clearly that health and safety is a priority and that management is willing and able to get involved.

Worker engagement is key, and this means building a reliable structure of consultation and communication, backed up with support in terms of management time and financial resources. If management is convincing in its support, then a sound foundation is created for the identification and reduction of risks in the workplace.

All of these areas -- people, processes and a health and safety culture -- are founded on understanding the problems, challenges and people who work in these areas and emphasising the need for employee engagement,  true consultation, problem-solving skills – the question is how can you achieve these fundamentals? 

About the author:
James Twigg is the owner of PPE.org a UK business providing cost-effective content and social media marketing services to the safety industry. James is NEBOSH qualified and is a media partner of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, EU-OSHA

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