If you work in a warehouse, you’ll already be well used to the requirements of wearing protective headgear and clothing that is suitable for the role you perform and the warehouse environment that you work in. What are the specific benefits of ensuring that you always have your headgear to hand?
Protection from falling items
Warehouses may operate under the safest and strictest of standards, but the nature of their operation means that accidents may always be possible. Protective headwear ensures that you don’t receive any injuries from a falling item – whether it’s dropping from a loader or a stacking system. The same protection is also conferred from any swinging items which can catch workers unawares from behind if something goes wrong.
Protection against slips and trips
Warehouses tend to have hard floors and there can be a risk of a slip, trip or fall, especially if there is water, ice or another liquid spillage. Protective headwear doesn’t just give you a safety net from items falling from above, it also protects your head if you do end up taking a tumble.
Protection against bumps
Similarly, when you are working in a role that involves lots of lifting, bending, loading and the operation of loaders, it is very easy to accidentally bump your own head on a piece of machinery or stacking device during the course of your work. Corner units are a particular hazard and can cause nasty injuries. Again, your safety helmet reduces this risk and you’ll wear a bump cap for the purpose.
Protection against entanglement
Long hair can get tangled in equipment and cause scalp and head injuries. Caps and hair nets are used alongside hard hats in warehouse environments to mitigate this risk.
An additional benefit of your protective headgear is that it immediately identifies you as a warehouse worker and helps to improve health and safety. This means that people can identify you and your role quickly and easily in an emergency and also have trust in the staff who are working on the warehouse floor in case any incident does occur.
The different types of head protection available
Businesses will use a mix of head protection devices depending on the work involved. The three main types are industrial hard hats or safety helmets, industrial scalp protectors or bump caps and caps or nets which prevent entanglement.
This type of headgear is used across a variety of warehouses, along with the construction and building repair industries, jobs which involve using bolt driving tools, work excavating tunnels, driving motorcycles and others. However, there are some people exempt from wearing hard hats on construction sites and further information on this can be found within The Employment Act of 1989.
Employers should define the instances in which they expect protective hard hats or other protective headgear to be worn, and so you should ensure that you are issued with the correct headgear when you commence working in a warehouse.
