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Thanks for stopping in today with us here at Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I’m Marty and I hope you enjoy today’s episode and something we talk about here will bring some value to your Career! We’ve had some really good topic suggestions and questions over the last several weeks, and we’ll try and talk to all of them this quarter, and keep them coming in, email host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com with your thoughts, we love all the sharing that’s going on! I attended a class that was presented by our WAOC Safety friend Joe this week on Blood borne Pathogens and it got me thinking about the different Orientations we go through as applicants which made me think of all the things us as warehouse or Operations Associates really need to know to advance within our Careers! I know we talk a lot about what companies do, or should be doing and teaching us as new hires, but being honest I’m hearing and finding that some hiring agents are prone to just plug us in and point to our task. I don’t feel that really helps them as employers and I know it doesn’t help us as employees with our long term Careers.
If you’re a weekly listener you know how I feel about Operations, what other industry can offer so many positions and opportunities for us to advance. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before but I know many many individuals that started out in a general labor position and worked their way up and into another field or department or are now leading their Op’s teams as VP’s, General managers or Presidents of their Organizations. Several of my warehousing peers branched off into merchandising, accounting, building maintenance and transportation. I know one guy that left the warehouse for a career in procurement and then on to run his own house as its President! Anyway, today let’s do a little of that self-education I’m so fond of and talk about some of the things our bosses should teach us and help us with!
So Joe’s blood borne Pathogen class taught me to think and plan ahead, I guess to be prepared is a good way to say it right?
He explained, and I summarize here of course:
29CFR1910.1030 applies to all occupational exposure to blood or other potentially infectious materials. Occupational Exposure means reasonably anticipated skin, eye, mucous membrane etc type contact with blood or other potentially infectious materials that may result from the performance of an employee’s duties. It’s important for us to know that Human Blood can contain many different pathogens, which means organisms that cause disease, including: Hepatis B, Hepatitis C and the HIV virus. Exposure can take place either by getting stuck with needles or something sharp or from a splash of blood to the face, eyes or other mucous membranes or even exposure to our hands when we have cuts, scratches or their chapped even.
The job of cleaning up a spill should be limited only to those persons who are properly trained. If an untrained person encounters blood, they should limit access to the area and find someone to help who is trained. There’s some really good information online if you’d like to learn more about precautions and prevention’s as well. In our industry it’s very possible we’ll experience cuts fingers and injuries within our careers and I feel this knowledge is really important and useful.
Another thing I’d like explained to us as a new hire are those facility specific things like the fire evacuation plans, the emergency weather planning, and any fire extinguisher policies, and of course where the SDS books are located, oh and of course I’d like us to be familiar with the emergency showers and eye wash stations too! I hope we all do ask or know to ask for the Safety Data Sheets books location, remember those are the sheets with the safety information on every chemical that’s stored at our facilities, it’s make up, flash point, etc. 29CFR1910.1200 requires that the chemical manufacturer, distributor, or importer provide Safety Data Sheets (SDSs) (formerly MSDSs or Material Safety Data Sheets) for each hazardous chemical to downstream users to communicate information on its hazards. The information we’ll find on the individual sheets are required to be presented in a consistent user-friendly, 16-section format. The important sections to us or to me are Section 4 The First Aid Measures and Section 8 which defines or explains Exposure Controls/Personal Protection. These days it’s required that every sheet is in the same format and the information is placed at the same place on every page. You may know these sheets as MSDS sheets, the name was changed back in 2012, well it’s really more than just a name change, it all came about with the HazCom act of 2012 and was implemented in 2015, it’s much better defined for us the employee now. I’ll include a link in today’s show notes to a pretty good page from OSHA.gov on the reg, https://www.osha.gov/Publications/OSHA3514.html it’s a quick read and you’ll probably find it pretty interesting. If you haven’t seen a sheet before be sure to go to your Supervisor and ask them to show you one, I feel it’s important that every warehouse employee can read one, you just never know what can happen!
You know another thing we need to know or understand are the GMP’s, at least the warehousing 101 version of them. I feel it’s kind of common sense but almost every warehouse’s General Maintenance Practices will mention things like:
No Eating in the Warehouse
No Gum or Candy in the Warehouse
No Personal Food Items in the Warehouse
Immediately report all damages and Spillage
Clean up spills immediately
Never stand pallets on their sides
Never place product on the floor
Do not step on cases or boxes
No Cell phone usage in the warehouse
Every warehouse will have its own rules and procedures and I think it’s important that we ask what they are if our hiring agent hasn’t covered them with us. I don’t think it’s a problem for us to ask for a printed copy of them either, I mean we’re going to be expected to follow them so I ask for them. What better way to get noticed by our Management Team that to bring up a rule or two that their supposed to be enforcing!
I think I mentioned our Evacuation routes a little earlier. I want to know how to get out of the building in an emergency and know where to go to so I can be counted and told when I can go back to work if that’s the case. I remember once when I was an order selector and was on ABC or production pay there was a false fire alarm and we all had to go outside and once it was cleared our Fire Captain wouldn’t let us go back in and start pulling again until he could account for every head, one or two of the guys didn’t know to go to the staging area for our group and it was costing me money! Going forward I made sure our whole team knew where to go!
It ought to go without saying but I think our companies Safety Procedures and Processes should be covered with us as new hires too. I think, or hope, that most of our new employers are covering this type of information with us but there again we as employees have to own some of the responsibility too. These procedures are simply there to keep us Safe and keep our teams and crews Safe. If they’re not reviewed with us lets be sure and bring them up, I assure you we can lose our job’s or get hurt by not knowing them and it’s another opportunity for us to get noticed by our management team by asking and wanting to be knowledgeable. Again, their responsibility is to enforce them so I feel they’ll appreciate our attention to them!
One other thing we need to know and understand is our Position or our new Job. Every task has its own job description and its SOP’s or standard operational procedures should be thoroughly explained to us and I think we should ask for them in writing also. SOP’s will help us get up to speed and our productivity will start off much quicker if we follow them. Remember our SOP will walk us through every step of our position, something like:
Punch In
Suit up
Sign out and Pre Trip our Equipment
Turn in our Pre Trip Sheet to Maintenance
Attend the Start Up/Pre Shift meeting
Perform our Pre Shift Exercises and Stretching
Drive to Pallet storage area picking up out empty selection pallets
Pull down the first batch
Go to first selection aisle and start batch
Complete batch and stage at proper door to be loaded Etc…
They’ve been put in place to aid in our training and as new employees we should use them. It’s another one of those things I feel is perfectly alright to ask for. Again I believe our bosses will notice us, know that we’re taking our job seriously and will help see to it that we succeed. It’s in their best interest, they need us to be successful!
We’ve talked about New Hire Orientations several times here at WAOC, mostly about what to expect maybe but I feel it’s one of those things we as employees shoulder a little responsibility. We’ve talked about the importance of our Resume, aceing our interviews and understanding our onboarding process with Human Resources & Benefits. Those are our responsibility and I think that responsibility continues with us right on to the Job itself, our Careers are our responsibility right! And I feel understanding our training, the rules and expectations of our jobs and all the Safety procedures is our best shot, and really the first step towards our Career!
There’s a couple of facts and a few of my opinions or experiences for the day, I hope you enjoyed the episode. Check out the links I’ve added to today’s show notes on our website & please Like and Follow our Facebook and Twitter feeds, we’re sharing thoughts their throughout the week and they’re a great place to share your experiences with the group! Thanks for checking in with us today & let’s all be sure to speak up at this week’s Start up meetings, throw out a Safety point to the crew and help keep each other Incident Free!