THE ONETRACK GUIDE TO FORKLIFT SAFETY
Build an Effective Forklift Safety Program (Backed by Data)
Why create a forklift safety program?
A forklift safety program is a coordinated, strategic effort that combines AI forklift camera systems with enhanced video coaching to improve operator behavior, reduce accidents, improve warehouse culture, and increase the life of your MHE. Read on for a step-by-step guide to build an effective forklift safety program from start to finish.
3 reasons to invest in a forklift safety program
70%+
of forklift accidents are preventable (OSHA)
90,000+
forklift related injuries each year
48%+
fewer incidents at companies with strong safety cultures (HBR)
IN THIS CHAPTER
01. Before you begin: Invest in the right forklift safety system
02. Pre-launch planning: Set your goals and implementation plan
03. Implementation and rollout: Communicate policies and train your team
04. Day-to-day workflows: Improve operator behavior with video based coaching
05. Data-driven improvements: Use robust reporting to improve safety processes
Part 1 — Before You Begin
Invest in the right forklift safety system
A great forklift safety program relies on 3 things. Deep visibility, actionable data, and team buy-in. So before you begin, you need to invest in the right forklift safety system that can deliver that visibility and data you need.
The best forklift safety platforms —which should include AI forklift cameras, forklift telematics, and AI labor management — help reduce forklift safety incidents by more than 75% on average.
If you haven't invested in a forklift camera safety solution yet, check out OneTrack’s Warehouse Intelligence platform, which includes everything you need to keep your people safe and productive.
Chapter 1
How to select the best forklift camera system for you
See the benefits of forklift safety cameras and how to select the best technology for your warehouses
Part 2 — Pre-Launch Planning
Set your goals and implementation plan
Once you’ve invested in a good forklift safety solution, it’s time to tackle change management.
Typically there’s a couple weeks from when you make the investment to when the forklift cameras actually get installed. And then about 4-6 weeks for what we call the calibration period, making sure that the AI model is tailored to your operations.
Don’t let those weeks go to waste. This is the perfect time to map out your goals, start changing processes, and work on a communication plan. Luckily, if you work with OneTrack we’re there to help you every step of the way.
Want to see for yourself how OneTrack works? Check out this interactive product tour.
Determine your problem areas
Almost every logistics leader creates a forklift safety program because of a specific problem or pain point.
Maybe you’ve had a stretch where accidents are on the rise. Maybe it’s one major forklift accident. Or maybe it’s just a gut feeling that things are happening in your warehouses but you can’t hold operators accountable and coach them.
Whatever that is for you it should become the foundation of your forklift safety program. While the program is sure to grow and expand over time, it’s best to start with a specific problem in mind first.
Set your goals
Now it’s time to set a few goals that you want to achieve from your forklift safety program. Start small here, write down 2-3 specific KPIs that you want to measure and improve.
It’s easy to get lost in the data and try and improve everything at once, but that’s a recipe for disaster. You’ll stretch yourself too thin and lose faith in the process.
Aim small, miss small. Then scale up.
Common goals for a forklift safety program
Minimize OSHA TIR
Reduce unplanned maintenance costs
Eliminate operator phone use
Decrease property and product damage
Improve labor retention
Create a culture of safety
Establish your implementation timeline
Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your forklift safety program.
Building a solid implementation timeline will help you organize your efforts, align internal stakeholders, and ensure a successful deployment. When building your timeline, make sure to include phases (like “installation, training, and go-live”) as well as key milestones in each phase (like “all supervisors have completed training”).
It may also be helpful to have regular meetings to track progress and stay accountable to your plan, as well as get feedback for ways to improve the overall program.
Don’t worry, with OneTrack, our implementation team will help you build this timeline, communicate the plan, and we’ll host regular check-in meetings to keep the project moving.
The phases of a forklift safety implementation
Get everyone on the team on the same page for how things are going to go. This isn’t something that you turn on and magic happens. It takes everyone buying into a new process to foster a safety culture in your warehouses.
Part 3 — Implementation and Rollout
Communicate your forklift safety program and get operator buy-in
The hardest part of any program comes from communication, training, and getting everyone on the same page. Without internal buy-in, no program can succeed, no matter how well planned.
Start with your supervisors
Supervisors need to be involved earlier on in this process than your operators and for good reason. Most warehouse supervisors have never had to coach like this before.
Matt Ireland, Director of EHS at Holman Logistics said, “Supervisors want to stick up for their team. But sometimes that means making excuses for them instead of coaching them. With video evidence, supervisors can’t make excuses for their team members. It helps them grow and be better leaders by holding people accountable.”
3 Tips to Turn your Supervisors into Safety Champions
Your forklift safety program success relies on your supervisors becoming safety champions in your warehouses. Here are 3 tips that our customers have found successful.
5 tips to get operator buy-in on forklift cameras
Pushback at the beginning is normal. Change is hard but it’s necessary. To help ensure maximum operator buy-in, here’s some tips that have worked for our customers:
01. Set expectations on corrective action
No one wants to be in fear of getting fired. Make it clear what the expectations are for operators and what corrective action will look like.
Will you use a “3-strike” policy? Will there be different actions based on different events? Whatever it is, be transparent and consistent so everyone knows what to expect.
Part 4 — Day-to-Day Workflows
Consistent, data-driven, video-based operator coaching
Behavioral coaching is the backbone of any good forklift safety program. Adding data and video takes that to a new level. It’s important to build out consistent coaching workflows to help your team improve operator behavior, reduce forklift incidents, and foster a culture of safety.
Determine your "critical" events
Coaching after serious impacts should always be a priority. But for this, think back to the goals you set. What are the specific behaviors or KPIs you wanted to improve on?
Then work with your team to build out a process around that. Want to cut down on operator phone use and not looking in the direction of travel?
Or maybe it's something more specific like unloading rail cars or how operators handle empties.
With OneTrack, your supervisors get real-time email alerts for the safety events that matter to you. This way they can have coaching conversations within minutes of an event happening, when it’s still fresh.
Check out these specific customer examples on how they improved warehouse safety processes using forklift cameras.
Upgrade your safety meetings with actionable data
Many of our customers hold weekly safety meetings. Their operations managers, warehouse managers, and supervisors all get together, review last week's data, and talk about the coming week's action plan.
OneTrack brings data into that equation. With our reports you can easily get a list of your “riskiest” operators in a given timeframe, quickly see their incident history, and video evidence.
Now during the meeting you can focus on how best to coach these specific operators and talk through ideas to help improve specific behaviors, processes, and root causes in your warehouses.
Set-up consistent workflows for corrective action
Should every safety event be sent to operations leadership or should events automatically get assigned directly to supervisors with only critical event types getting escalated?
Some behaviors are worse than others. And sometimes operators simply don’t want to comply with your processes.
Either way you can set up automated workflows to loop in operations leadership, or even HR, when a certain trigger is met. Such as an incident that caused serious injury, or a history of non-compliance.
Every warehouse will have a slightly different process. Luckily, a system like OneTrack is completely configurable to meet your specific needs.
Part 5 — Data-Driven Improvements
Use robust reporting to make operational process improvements
Video coaching is an incredible piece of your forklift safety program but there’s more to be done.
Warehouses have a lot of data at their disposal, but it’s usually not actionable. Hidden away in 7 different systems and needing complex spreadsheets to do anything with it.
With a forklift safety system like OneTrack, you get access to a powerful suite of reporting to make site and network level improvements.
From doing a root cause analysis at a site, reviewing network trends, to performing in-depth safety investigations — unlocking your data is the key to a successful forklift safety program.
Make forklift safety a priority with OneTrack
OneTrack's AI Forklift cameras and safety tools give logistics leaders the visibility they need to help reduce forklift accidents, improve operator behavior, and lower costs. Explore how our Warehouse Intelligence platform can help you improve safety and drive ROI.
AI Forklift Cameras
Protect your warehouses and keep people safe with AI forklift cameras that monitor MHE for risks 24/7 and send real-time video alerts to help keep operations running smoothly.
Dynamic Labor Management
Engineered labor standards are broken. Improve productivity in your warehouses by using AI to proactively alert you of risks, track your labor processes, and connect WMS timestamps with video context to make critical process improvements.
Proactive Operator Coaching
Coaching shouldn't ONLY happen after a major incident. Get alerts of the leading indicators of MHE safety incidents to coach operator behavior proactively and change the culture in your warehouses.
