How to improve safety and well-being at work for your employees?

A company’s performance is not only measured by the number of sales but also by the well-being and health of its employees. So how can you improve the safety at work for your teams? Manutan presents you with the best practices to follow to improve your employees’ working conditions and to keep them safe.

Why improve safety at work?

Firstly, improving workplace safety contributes to the company’s growth and development. Secondly, looking after employee health and safety is one of the employer’s legal obligations. These two elements make safety at work a very important consideration for a company’s CSR policy.

For a warehouse manager, ensuring the safety of their employees is therefore a top priority. In fact, as handling tools and equipment is about being continually in motion, there is a significant risk of vehicle collision. In addition, waste due to the weight and size of the goods is not uncommon in warehouses.

In addition to the costs of temporary incapacity or even longer periods of absence from work, these accidents disrupt the business and can cause additional workload. So how can you reduce the risk of accidents at work and look after your employees’ health?

What are the best practices for improving workplace safety?

To improve workplace safety, the action plan you implement should focus as much on safety training as on providing information and prevention procedures.

Staff training

In order to improve safety at work, you need to ensure your teams are aware of the company’s safety policies on a regular basis. For example, in the warehouse, providing operators with appropriate training ensures efficient handling of heavy loads and prevents workplace injuries. This continuous approach ensures that goods are moved safely when using trucks and trolleyshttps://www.manutan.co.uk/en/key/trolleys and through pallet racking or industrial warehouse shelving.

By holding workshops and meetings about occupational risk prevention, you can help your employees learn about workplace safety protocols. In the warehouse, for example, wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) must become an instinctive habit.

Use of visual aids

The brain remembers visual information better. Humans retain 10% of what they hear, 20% of what they read and 80% of what they see1. In the warehouse, visual management is an extremely effective tool for employers. Maximise access to occupational safety tips by posting basic safety instructions on signs and specifying the most appropriate working posture at each workstation. Optimise intra-warehouse flows to avoid collisions by using floor markings and implement a traffic plan, to minimise workplace incidents. If there are any changes, remember to update the safety labels and signs in your warehouse. Take as many steps as possible to create a safety culture within the workplace.

Checking equipment conformity

To minimise the risk of accidents, regularly check the condition of your equipment, such as the wheels on forklifts, rack conformity, the quality of shelving and pallets, etc. This preventive maintenance approach helps improve safety at work.

How do you improve health and safety at work by preventing MSDs?

Handling of heavy loads, machine vibrations, repetitive movements or awkward working postures can be the cause of many musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and possibly other workplace injuries and illnesses. These conditions are extremely painful and sometimes disabling. Here are some levers you can activate to prevent and reduce MSDs in the warehouse, and generally minimise occupational hazards.

Check the ergonomics of workstations

Together with your operators, analyse each workstation and the posture required. Arrange ergonomics and workstation design workshops with health professionals. By changing the height of seats to suit individual operators or by choosing adapted wheels, you can improve and help keep your teams’ posture on an everyday basis.

Get your staff moving

Create rotations in your teams: in a fast-moving organisation, versatility is key. By changing jobs regularly, your employees will be trained in new and different roles, and can learn to perform a greater variety of less repetitive tasks.

Use technology

By incorporating technology into your work environment, you can significantly reduce physical exertion and cut down on demanding tasks. In the warehouse, robotic equipment such as pallet conveyors, stacker cranes, lift tables, or exoskeletons are becoming more popular. These are all solutions that can lighten your employees’ workloads, optimise workflows, and improve your company’s profitability.

What about well-being?

In addition to the physical safety of your employees and the prevention of MSDs, it is essential to consider their quality of working life (QWL).

Definition of QWL

Quality of life at work is a concept based on actions that reconcile the continuous improvement of employees’ working conditions with the pursuit of company performance.

In order to optimise the working environment as a whole, individual and communal issue such as exertion, stress, work-life balance, disability, social protection, etc., must be taken into account. It is all about promoting the well-being of your employees by taking the following precautions.

Set up working groups and focus groups

High work rates, daily demands on workstations, and frequent organisational changes create stress for teams. Leadership should organise working groups focusing on stress prevention and involve employees at all levels of the hierarchy. This will help to identify potential hazards, prevent injury and incidents, offer support and positive feedback, provide access to new common solutions, and provide overall resources for greater health and safety (such as training). These benefits will then improve productivity and both employee and employer satisfaction.

Encourage good management

After all, a happy and motivated employee is much more productive! Managers and leadership in general are implicitly involved in the physical and mental health of their teams. As part of an improvement process, make your managers aware of the problems in this area by encouraging bottom-up management, and providing them with the resources and information to act on these issues.

By being attentive to employees’ difficulties, managers show recognition and respect for the work they do. This type of approach contributes to achieving the right balance between operational performance, business constraints and worker well-being.

As you can see, preventing accidents and MSDs or other incidents in your warehouse is an essential step in looking after your employees’ health and safety. Now that you know how to improve safety at work, all you have to do is commit to your employees’ well-being! Capitalise on Manutan’s expertise in this area by downloading our “Well-working” white paper.