Top 10 Safety Tips

Working in Extreme Temperature Environments is Hazardous, and Accidents can Happen Very Quickly

In an excerpt from GCCA's Top 10 Employee Safety Tips, Americold's Rick Stevens offers his advice on workplace safety.

A key to safety among employees is regular maintenance checks. “Employees should be performing monthly assessments of protective equipment to identify safety hazards and understand what safeguards are needed to mitigate or eliminate hazards,” says Rick Stevens, Director of Safety for Americold. “This will help reduce the potential for injuries and worker’s comp claims.”

Stay aware of the latest safety measures and advice from both inside and outside resources dealing with the cold chain industry. Whether it’s government resources such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) or research groups such as the Federal Motor Carrier Administration’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program or the Institut de Recherche Robert- Sauvé en Santé et en Sécurité du Travail (IRSST — leading occupational health and safety research center in Canada), there’s a lot of information available on ways to stay safer in a work environment. Groups on LinkedIn or Facebook are also good places to learn information. “Exchange between professionals in the same line of work provides a priceless perspective,” Stevens says. “Discussing the same problems in similar environments offer simple solutions and can be easily put to use in everyday operation.”

Stevens notes employees should review all safety policies that a company has offered. Even if this means going back to those first booklets, pamphlets, and software that’s handed out the first week of the job. For any questions that come up, or if you realize there’s something you are not doing, review with management. If this is something that an employee feels needs to be improved, Stevens recommends starting a safety committee among workers and encourages dialogue about the past training. 

To read the full article on GCCA's website, please click here.