It’s easy for dirt, dust and grime to build up in warehouses. Not only are they incredibly busy workplaces, where team members rarely have time for anything deeper than surface-level cleaning, but the sheer size of them makes them somewhat difficult to keep on top of, which can have a negative impact on how well your facility meets warehouse health and safety requirements.
Of course, however tricky, it’s still incredibly important that anyone behind the operations of any warehouse ensures that it’s kept clean and tidy at all times. In a warehouse there is the potential for serious incidents and accidents to occur, and every effort should be made to reduce the risk of accidents.
Warehouse health and safety requirements focus on the impact of maintaining equipment and keeping your warehouse clean and tidy to ensure the health and safety of all who work there, or may be visiting.
To fall in line with warehouse health and safety requirements, every effort should be made to reduce the risk of accidents, as follows:
Maintaining equipment
All equipment should be carefully and regularly serviced, with specialised equipment used only by trained, authorised employees. Access in areas where forklift trucks are used needs to be restricted, in order to prevent people from being hit during loading/unloading activities.
Storing cleanly and tidily
Racking and shelving should be checked on a regular basis, with any collapsing stacks immediately restacked. Stock should be kept tidy on shelves and cleaned regularly to prevent injury from trips and so on. Shelving and racks should be appropriately secured to the wall or floor, and where this isn’t possible, should be kept to two levels.
Personal safety requirements
As the primary focus of warehouse health and safety requirements is to maintain the safety of staff, they must be adequately equipped to work in a dangerous environment. As such, they should be issues with protective clothing, which should be kept clean and regularly inspected to ensure they are fit for purpose. They should be aware of all hazards and fully trained in safe working techniques, with first aid kits readily available and a basic first aider amongst staff.
Hazards
Hazardous materials should be assessed to determine the correct action to be taken when a spillage occurs. Spilled goods should be immediately cleaned, and expired goods must be correctly disposed of immediately. Smoking should be prohibited in the warehouse and any adjoining compounds, and cooking/open fires should be restricted to designated areas. Damaged pallets should either be repaired or discarded.
The importance of maintaining a clean factory
Now that we have discussed general warehouse health and safety requirements, we can see the necessity for regular and effective cleaning plays a large role in adhering to these regulations. Read on for a look at just a few of the reasons why warehouse cleaning is so important.
Customer satisfaction
If you have a warehouse that is either storing or processing products, it’s crucial that dirt or dust in the warehouse is removed before it can build up. This is because dust and dirt have the potential to be transferred from surfaces within the warehouse to the products themselves.
It’s important to clean up all shelves, floors, and other surfaces within the warehouse for this reason, including those which require cleaning at height.
Ensuring that the storage areas within the warehouse are clean will prevent products from becoming dirty, in turn preventing unfortunate situations in which customers are inadvertently sent unsatisfactory goods.
Efficiency
Having a clean warehouse helps to ensure that you or your workers are not held back by unnecessary delays caused by soiled, slippery or unsafe surfaces.
As the operator of the warehouse, it is your own responsibility to ensure that staff work in safe and clean surroundings.
Should an employee become injured due to a slip, trip or fall, the area of the warehouse may need to be closed off from staff while the incident is investigated and reported, ultimately slowing down warehouse operations.
Furthermore, if it’s found that a lack of cleanliness in the warehouse contributed to the incident – wet floors, etc. – your team member may file a claim against you and your business for injury or loss of earnings.
Employee health
Slips, trips, and falls are by far the most common cause of injury in the workplace, accounting for around 37% of all workplace injuries and a worrying 28% of workplace fatalities.
However, they aren’t the only injuries that can occur in a warehouse due to neglected cleaning duties.
One of your main priorities as a warehouse operator should be ensuring the health of your team and providing them with good working conditions.
If staff members are working in a dusty environment, for example, it could lead to huge complications for staff members suffering from ailments like asthma or other respiratory issues.
Dirt and dust are good for nobody – especially those working amongst it for hours each day. Prevent employees from developing health problems by ensuring your warehouse is clean and tidy at all times.
Passing health and safety inspections
It’s important to keep your warehouse clean and tidy at all times in accordance with guidance by the HSE, the UK’s government health and safety body which sets warehouse health and safety requirements.
Advice on cleaning warehouse importance is outlined throughout the HSE’s Warehousing and Storage: Keep It Safe guide, which states ‘Within warehouses, water, oil, cleaning products, dry powders and foodstuffs can all make the floor more slippery. Other items, like stretch wrapping, label backing and plastic bags can also cause slips’.
The guide continues ‘When (floor) contamination does happen, deal with it immediately, eg. By cleaning’.
In order to ensure that you pass any inspections by the HSE, you should always familiarise yourself with the official guidance on warehouse cleaning and put it into action.
Invest in quality warehouse cleaning with Samsic UK
Samsic UK are proud to provide trusted Facilities Management services to both commercial and institutional clients across a range of industries, including clients within the sectors of Education, Retail, Industrial, Public Sector, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals and more.
Clean warehouse environments help foster better employee health and wellbeing, boosting productivity through the prevention of accident or illness-related absence. We tailor our services to your needs, ensuring that our teams are discrete, working at low traffic times and integrating into your shift patterns to minimise disruption to your operations.
Our innovative solutions to your requirements ensure that our teams can deliver the most efficient cleaning service, no matter what your budget.
Our services are fully bespoke, tailored to the needs of each client, including those in the warehouse business. Given the importance of warehouse cleaning, why not allow one of Samsic UK’s expert contract cleaning teams to assist you in achieving a high standard of clean throughout your warehouse?
For more information on any of Samsic UK’s services, make a request for quotation today.
