Health and Safety in the Freight Areas

As someone who is working in the freight industry, you will have some knowledge of the potential health and safety issues faced by you and your team. However, it is of vital importance in your workplace that you can adequately look after both yourself and the employees that are under your duty of care. Consider your Safety 2019

This handy guide has been compiled to assist you in the safe running of the freight yard and give you a helping hand to get you on the right track. By following these pieces of advice, you will be able to rest assured that you’re a responsible team leader and are doing your utmost to look after the people you care about in this dangerous environment.

Assess the potential for risks

One of the biggest things you can do to avoid injury is preventing accidents before they even have the chance to happen. The best way to make this happen is to learn how to do a risk assessment for each job you have to complete on the freight area. For instance, you will probably have to have quite a bit of safety equipment on hand ready for anything that might occur. There is no point leaving it out for everyone to trip over, it has to be in a secure area that can be accessed as and when needed to prevent theft and build up in the main areas. Installing lockers may be your best bet here and you can then give the manager in charge that day the locker keys to help keep everything secure.

Doing a risk assessment forces you to think about every possible thing that could go wrong on a job and put in place measures to prevent these from ever happening. The key here is to always brief those on your team about the risk assessments so that they are aware of the potential dangers and what to do to make sure they don’t happen.

Make sure everyone can be seen

In the busy work place of a freight yard, making sure that you and your team can be easily seen from those in control of vehicles in the yard is essential for the prevention of potentially fatal accidents. Looking to some of the high visibility clothing you might be able to furnish your workforce will help them to be more secure and avoid all kinds of injury while they are on the job from now on.

Make sure everyone can be heard

Setting up a radio system so that everyone on the floor can keep in constant communication is also a fantastic way of ensuring safety. Having these lines of communication lined up also means that responses to accidents that do occur are swift and will limit the damage done.

Getting the justice that you deserve after an accident

No matter how many precautions you take, it only takes one person to ignore safety protocol just once for an accident to occur and leave you in a sticky situation.

When you become injured, you can lose income as you take time to recover and this can place you into a position of financial hardship. By having professionals on your side, you have a better chance of making a successful claim and being able to take the time that you need to recover.

Make sure you have a rainy day fund in place to make sure you are dealing with the most common workplace injuries when you need to take the time off due to the accident. You don’t want to be struggling, especially if you are paid a low amount of income like statutory sick pay which won’t cover your bills properly.

It’s always worthwhile looking into your options and ensuring you are remaining safe, ensuring that you are moving forward into a safe space and making sure you are fully aware too!

*This is a collaboration post