How connected safety can increase safety in warehouses – Occupational health and safety

How connected safety can increase safety in warehouses

Using connected safety can ensure compliance with OSHA’s latest NEP, protect employees, increase efficiency, and prevent safety issues before they become safety incidents.

• By Lorenza Ordónez
• May 1, 2024

What happens when you combine labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and an increasing number of construction projects? For safety managers around the world, this is leading to a growing number of workplace safety incidents.

While the top 10 OSHA citations remained relatively unchanged from the year before, overall citation numbers increased across the board in 2023. As companies across many industries continue to struggle to stay compliant, OSHA stepped in with a recent National Emphasis Program (NEP), aimed specifically at warehouses and distribution centers. Announced in July 2023, this NEP aims to reduce current injury rates in this area, which in some sectors are more than twice that of the private sector.

Safety risks in warehouses and between distribution centers are numerous and diverse. Some common risks involve forklift accidents and injuries; the often invisible ergonomic injuries; as well as slips, trips and falls. But there are others, such as falling objects, cuts to the hands, compliance with personal protective equipment and heat stress that can also affect workers. These hazards are not unique to these environments, but the scope and depth of the hazards within a warehouse make the environment particularly challenging.

The worst part? Companies often have no insight into what is happening, or have difficulty correcting the pattern without the right insights.

Fortunately, there is good news. Technology, and especially connected safety solutions, can play an important role in not only identifying and mitigating risks before they become OSHA citations, but also helping companies manage their overall safety program like never before.

The power of connected security

Connected security solutions, as the name suggests, use network devices such as cameras and wearables that are enabled by sensors, among other things, to collect data about potential security risks, analyze the information and trigger a response or communicate it to users or security managers. They can often act as an extension of the safety manager and bring together valuable insights in one dashboard. Empowering these safety managers, who are often distributed and wear many hats within their organizations, to illustrate and make available all facets of their safety program with just a few clicks, transforming your business to better protect your employees and your bottom line .

This article originally appeared in the April/May 2024 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.