Keep The Safety Momentum Alive

Some of our facilities have a safety bingo game where a certain amount of money is contributed to the pot for each day that employees are accident-free. At the end of a certain period, they draw a name, and that person wins the pot. The catch is the pot returns to zero each time there's an injury-and no one wants to be the one that zeroes things out.

Stay the course: On a final note, allow me to say that one of the best ways for an organization to keep safety momentum going is to continue funding an active safety initiative-even if your company's employees haven't had many major incidents or injuries in recent years.

No matter how mature your safety effort is-or how safety-conscious your employees are-nothing changes the fact that the shipping profession has more than its fair share of hazards and risks.

If your logistics program has been accident-free for a long time, don't automatically assume it means you don't need a safety program. You may have been lucky rather than safe.

As long as you have human beings working in the warehouse, there will always be room for error-and a need for safety vigilance. d

Gordon is director of risk management, Americas, APL Logistics, Oakland, CA.