Developing a Forklift Safety Meeting

Over 3000 casualties per year occur from forklifts.  Forklift casualties has been classified as one of the top 10 casualties occurring in work environments every year.  Therefore, the concern for forklift safety has to be of utmost concern for businesses today.  One effective way is to have regular forklift safety meetings. Depending upon the safety risks associated with your work environment, as well as the number of casualties that occurred at your workplace, the number of times they occur will vary.  Some business have meetings every month, and others do it twice a year. However, having a consistent forklift safety meeting can help place a strong emphasis on forklift safety, and can help dramatically reduce the number of casualties occurring from forklifts. Below are some ideas one can discuss and train forklift workers when conducting a forklift safety meeting.

#1 OSHA Standards

One major importance to bring up in forklift safety meetings are the OSHA forklift safety requirements. While all forklift operators should have already undergone OSHA forklift training, keeping all forklift drivers up-to-date, as well as quickly retraining forklift operators of previously learned OSHA policies keeps them constantly informed —thereby keeping employees reminded of the strict requirements that are set by OSHA.

#2 Discuss Recent Forklift Casualties

Another topic that should be discussed during forklift training includes any recent forklift casualties that occurred.  If there weren’t any casualties, then this should be mentioned and praised highly to help encourage the forklift operators to continue to focus on safety.  If there were casualties, then you will want to focus on detailing exactly what happened, along with what should have been done to prevent that casualty.  Regardless of how large the calamity was, it is important to still discuss this.  This helps emphasize the importance that something bad could have still occurred and that workers need to continuously be cautious when operating forklifts.

#2 Encourage Discussion of Forklift Hazard Areas

Continuously locating forklift hazardous areas should always be an important emphasis to help limit casualties from forklifts. While there may be forklift hazardous areas identified and marked, this doesn’t mean all dangerous areas have been fully and clearly identified.  Additionally, recent changes within a construction site or warehouse may have created a new hazardous area not identified.  Because they are constantly exposed to driving through these unidentified hazardous areas, these locations can be better identified by the forklift operators themselves.  Having forklift operators openly discussing the dangerous areas when operating a forklift can help identify areas that need special attention including:

• Indicating areas where workers are not allowed to walk
• Indicating  areas where stop signs, yield signs, or caution signs need to be placed
• Zoning an area as being unsafe for forklift trucks to operate in

#3 Training on new forklifts, as well as new forklift attachments & Forklift Accessories

There are many different types of forklifts, and they all vary between speed and purpose.  If new forklift trucks are brought in, then it is necessary to properly train employees on how to handle that equipment.  Also, there are a wide variety of forklift accessories and attachments available today. If you would like to review the various types of forklift attachments and accessories available, please go here. Forklift attachment and accessories turn the forklift into a completely different machine, making it is necessary to train employees in proper usage.