Warehouse Safety: Assessment, Behavior, and Culture Analysis

This report delves into the critical aspects of warehouse safety, focusing on worker behavior, safety culture, and the assessment and facilitation of safe practices. Through a literature review and case studies, the report investigates the impact of safety culture dimensions, including procedures, people, and technology, on employee safety behavior within Logistics Service Providers (LSPs). The findings highlight the varying importance assigned to safety across different warehouses, suggesting the presence of subcultures. The research identifies key factors influencing the translation of safety culture into safe behavior, such as leadership commitment, employee motivation, and workload. The report emphasizes the significance of management's role, the use of technology, and the importance of continuous learning and improvement to mitigate risks and prevent accidents. It also provides practical implications and areas for future research, such as the exploration of perception and reaction processes in safety contexts. This report contributes valuable insights to the limited existing literature on warehouse safety, offering a comprehensive understanding of how to enhance safety performance in the industry.

Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to focus on the effects of safety behaviour of workers,
safety culture, and warehouse safety assessment and facilitation. Through a literature
study, we have developed a method for providing insights into how to assess and
facilitate the safety of warehouse. To minimize the risk of accidents and injuries, the
management plant must ensure safety. Using literature, we identify sub - related
procedures, people and technology - dimensions of safety culture and safety behaviors
and factors that may affect how safety culture translates into security behaviour. Our
findings show what sub - dimensions and influencing factors Logistics Service
Providers (LSP) employees find important and why through case studies. We found
that the importance assigned to safety differs, which may indicate the existence of
subcultures across warehouses. This paper contributes to the limited existing
warehouse safety literature in which the safety - related factors are not well
investigated. The case study investigates one LSP, providing valuable insights into
and how to influence important safety aspects. Future research might address this
issue by unknown in the process of reaction, for example by directing a study, or
possibly by performing a consideration of perception. Taking everything into account,
our discoveries demonstrate the significance of the group pioneers ' contribution as
well as their insight into, safety and the significance of innovation in counteracting /
limiting dangerous circumstances when efforts are made to build up the safety culture.
Furthermore, the inborn inspiration of representatives and the worker's outstanding
task at hand are the primary variables that impacting the interpretation of a security
culture to safe conduct.
Keywords: Warehouse Safety, Improve Facilities, Leadership, Safety Behaviour

1.0 Introduction
The aim of this paper is primarily to evaluate and facilitate warehouse safety and
discuss the methodology to be used to assess the importance of warehouse safety as it
is considered to be of importance to both employees and companies. This paper also
correctly identifies the findings and limitations of research. Moreover, through our
methodology, the paper also helps to offer practical implications as well as paper
originality. Thousands of employees worldwide are suffering from serious accidents
every day. Not only do these accidents have a negative impact on employees '
physical and mental health, but they also bring high costs to the business and society
as a whole. In the warehouse, a large part of these accidents took place. There were
4,585 deaths from workplace injuries in 2013, according to the National Council for
Occupational Safety and Health, and an estimated 50,000 deaths from workplace
exposure are reported annually. These figures do not even indicate the injured
workers, some of whom may be sufficiently serious to prevent them from engaging in
manual labour.(SIMON BRISK, 2017) In the logistics service industry, safety is
generally important as data from 2016 helps to indicate, such as the United States.
Data from 2016 shows that the number of deaths in the transportation and
warehousing sector in the United States is ranked second highest in the number of
deaths. In addition, the injury rate of 13.5 persons per 100,000 workers is around four
times as high as the average injury rate in all industries. (U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics 2015) The warehousing sector generally accounts for the second highest
number of issues as well as fatalities. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2015), as
summarized in Figure 1 below.
Safety at the warehouse is about protecting employees and the business. But they still
don't have the awareness of the dangerous for many people. In a small country like
the Netherlands, there were 651,279 occupational accidents in 2015 that caused
injuries and joblessness. The number of occupational deaths ranged from 99 to 150
annually between 2016 and 2017 (Bureau of labor statistics, 2017). An unsafe
working environment can lead to an accident, and there is also a tendency for the
employer to have more rule. Most accidents in the warehouse are associated with the
use of forklift trucks. In 2015, 1700 people were seriously injured in the Dutch
warehouse in the Netherlands, according to data from (www.logistiek.nl).

There is usually heavy traffic in the warehouse, forklifts and workers work on foot,
and work is often under time pressure. (Koster et al., 2011).
Figure 1: Data in the United States. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2016, n.d.)
Therefore, focusing on safety behaviour and safety culture is important. Safety culture
is found to be mainly integrated with the number of observed safety culture. It is not
clear how to measure the safety culture and safety behaviour of the organization. It
appears that the term "safety culture" was first used after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
(“International Warehouse Logistics Association (IWLA)). Since then, a number of
safety culture definitions have been published. One of the most commonly used
definitions of safety culture has been developed by the UK Health and Safety
Committee. Today, in the workplace of each industry, safety culture is defined as
attitude, beliefs, perceptions or values that employees share with respect to safety.
"Communications based on mutual trust, shared perceptions of the importance of
safety and confidence in the effectiveness of preventive measures are characteristic of
organizations with positive safety culture."(U.K. Health and Safety Commission)
There are five characteristics of a positive safety culture. Firstly, leadership is a highly
visible commitment to safety by top management, which is critical to creating a

positive safety culture. Secondly, safety should be communicated as a value, not as a
priority that can be traded on cost and timelines. Thirdly, decentralized decision-
making and accountability by key safety groups are important to creating and
maintaining a positive safety culture. Fourthly, all staff should learn about safety and
contribute to improved safety ideas. If employees learn from insight and intuition
rather than incidents and change their way of thinking and acting by sharing their
experiences and addressing shared issues, a positive safety culture is achieved. Lastly,
a positive safety culture is one where safety is a top priority and is integrated into
every aspect of the business. A good safety culture can be promoted by senior
management commitment to safety, the practical approach to dealing with hazards,
ongoing organizational learning, and attention to and concern for hazards shared
across the workforce.(“A guide to implementing a SAFETY CULTURE in our
universities,” 2016) The safety culture of an organization can be a significant impact
on the performance of people in safety-related tasks and hence on the safety
performance of the organization.
Safety behaviour is safety-related behaviour. It can refer to behaviour-based safety,
enhancing safety by monitoring and changing people's behaviour and stress-relieving
activity performed by anxious individuals. Moreover, it requires more than mitigation
control to improve safety behaviour or active care behaviour. It would be effective if
management could use the Behaviour-Based Safety (BBS) approach. The BBS
concept is intended to change unsafe behaviour into safe behaviour and eliminate
accidents in the workplace. The steps taken by the BBS can be divided into four main
stages, identifying, observing, intervening, reviewing and monitoring.(Ismail et al.,
2012) BBS is not only suitable for the construction industry, but also for other
industries. (Chen & Tian, 2012) The use of social recognition and motivation to
conduct safe behaviour will have a more positive effect than the application on
changing normal safety standards within the group. All incident data are tabulated in
Table 1.

Yea
r
Location Accident Known /
suspected cause
Effect Refere
nces
201
5
Tianjin,
China
Explosion Dangerous
chemicals stored
on the site.
(Safety Culture)
More than 700
people were
injured by the
explosion, many
extensive injuries,
mostly from burns
and explosive
injuries. Over a
thousand
firefighters were
on scene, and 95
were killed.
BBC
(2015)
201
7
Netherlan
ds
Falls from
height
No safe system of
work in place as
none of the
workers had
safety harnesses
and the worker
are not pay
attention. (Safety
Culture)
Company have
been fined after a
worker fell from a
warehouse racking
system, suffering
serious head
injuries.
HSE
(2017)
201
7
Singapore Hit by
Forklifts
The company had
not trained or
communicated
any safe system
of work with the
forklift driver.
(Safety
behaviour)
A company was
fined S$80,000
after an accident
involving a
company forklift
caused an
employee to
sustain serious leg
CHAN
NEL
NEWS
ASIA

injuries. (2017)
201
8
Bengalur
u
Crushed by
heavy racks
fill with
crates full of
goods
Racks over
loaded and the
worker still
continues to
complete it.
(Safety behavior)
Stock was damage
and cause serious
injuries even dead
THE
NEWS
MINUT
E
(2018)
201
6
Tesco Manual
handling
incidents
Regular
movement of
cartons to pallets.
Rolls of stretch-
wrap and flat
pallets. (Safety
behavior)
Injury to
colleagues and
cost to the
business.
SHP
(2016)
Table 1 Selected Safety behaviour and culture hazard (2015-2018)
1.1 Research boundaries
This paper's scope is to cover the entire warehouse. Regardless of what the warehouse
is, the safety culture and safety behaviour is the same, so this proposed project will
cover all warehouse. However, this research involves a global outlook on warehouse
safety and is not limited to specific countries because safety culture and safety
behaviour in today's globalization era will be the same across multiple countries.
2.0 Literature review
2.1 Introduction of warehouse
In the sense, we can use the words “warehouse” and “distribution centre”
interchangeably. (De Villiers, Nieman, & Niemann, 2008) Warehousing can be
defined as a planned space for the efficient storage and handling of goods and
materials as well as the assumption of responsibility for the storage of goods.
Warehousing creates time utility by storing the goods throughout the year and
releasing them as and when needed.

Four types of warehouses are available, including private warehouses, public
warehouses, bonded warehouses, cooperative warehouses. Private warehouses are
owned for the storage of their own goods by individual producers, wholesalers in
different cities. In return for storage fees, the public warehouse is set up as
independent units for the storage of goods. These warehouses are state-licensed.
Government controls and regulates the way they operate and the rate of charge.
Bonded warehouses are duly authorized by the government to accept imported goods
to the store. The goods are released upon payment to the importer of customs
duties.The bonded warehouses may be owned by the dock or a private owner. These
warehouses operate under the country's customs authorities ' supervision and control.
It is also possible to establish cooperative warehouses in villages or cities.
Cooperative warehouse members can store their goods, which is relatively lower than
a private warehouse. (Umar Farooq, 2016)
All warehouses are used by customs, importers, manufacturers, wholesalers, exporter
transportation companies, etc. (Harris, 2006). They are usually large plain buildings in
the outskirts of towns, villages or cities, located in industrial parks. Usually they have
docks for loading and unloading goods from trucks. Sometimes warehouses are
designed directly from railways, airports or seaports to load and unload cargo. Usually
they also have forklifts and cranes for moving goods, which are often loaded into
pallet racks on standard ISO pallets. Stored goods may include any manufacturing,
raw materials, packaging materials, spare parts, components or finished goods.
There are many features in the warehouse that are very useful and helpful to
everyone. Warehouse functions include storage, price stabilization, risk bearing,
grading and packing, and funding. (Umar Farooq, 2016) Storage is the basic
warehouse function. It is not immediately necessary to store surplus commodities in
warehouses. When the customer needs it, they can be provided. In the process of price
stability, warehouses play an important role. It is implemented by creating
warehousing time utility. The price of the goods will fall if the supply of goods is
sufficient and the price rises during the slack season. They face many risks in the form
of theft, deterioration, exploration, fire when the goods are stored in warehouses.
Warehouses should be built in such a way that these risks are minimized. Nowadays,
warehouses provide packing, processing and grading facilities for goods. Loans can

be raised against the goods stored by the owner from the warehouse keeper.
(K.K.Pandey, 2018.) Likewise, banks and other financial institutions also advance
loans against receipts from warehouses. In this way, warehousing is used to meet
business operations as a source of finance for businessmen.
3.0 Warehouse Safety
All benefit from a safe and healthy workplace. This means that the employees feel
good and work flows smoothly. Supervisors carried on the financial and operational
safety and health responsibility in the workplace. Each employee is obliged to take
reasonable care of themselves and their colleague’s health and safety and to inform
the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) supervisor and representative of the
deficiencies in the workplace causing culture or behaviour. Induction and work
guidance play an important role in ensuring safety at work. Induction refers to all
actions taken to familiarize a new employee with the workplace, its culture, and
behaviour of people, as well as the work itself and the related behaviour. Work
guidance includes everything related to the performance of the parts and stages of the
task as well as the knowledge and competence required by the job.(“Safety
Responsibilities for Supervisors,” )
Nowadays, there are many accidents occurred in the warehouse, such as falling on
height, blade cutting, hitting by the forklift, etc. According to (Ding et al., 2016),
factors that are useful for warehouse safety are generally identified as helpful in
reducing hazard as well as various types of safety - specific transformation - based
leadership that further contribute to significant warehouse safety influence. They also
find appropriate safety awareness that does not interfere with the impact of Safety-
Specific Transformation Leadership (SSTL) on warehouse safety. It is stated by
(Peninsula et al., 2016) that hazardous materials generally have well - defined storage
standards which are mainly set with the help of legislation to minimize potential
hazards. It is found that this type of storage standards must be allowed permitted and
therefore the various list of potential hazards generally serves as one of the inputs for
the risk management process.

According to (J. et al., 2016) , the hazardous substance shall be properly stored
outside the warehouse at a distance of approximately 5 - 10 m by combining the
various types of hazardous materials generally stored. Separation is found to generally
mean storage within the entire storage area, but with the help of barriers or gaps,
products with different classes can be separated from each other. Exceptions related to
the case different types of storage regulations such as regulations related to
explosives, where flammable substances are observed quite effectively. In addition,
segregation storage is generally required within the proper storage area. Moreover,
proper labelling of different chemical-based substances is considered as one of the
main issues as it is considered to be the most visible communication tools. (Office,
2017) This label is generally regarded as the first sources of information generally
alerting the users to various inherent chemicals hazards and instructions related to safe
storage and handling.
4.0 Methodology
In this paper, factors in the logistics services industry influence the translation of
safety culture into safety behaviour. It is known that behavior is influenced by culture,
but also by contextual factors that interact with culture.(Edwards, Davey, &
Armstrong, 2013). There are two methods to be implemented that are safety culture
and its dimension and safety behaviour and dimension, as summarized in Figure 2
below. Both methods are used to ensure warehouse safety to achieve the warehouse's
safe environment. Warehouse safety is very important because inside the warehouse
there are many workers working. Their safety is one of the priorities to be taken into
account in order to maximize warehouse productivity.
Influencing Factors

Figure 2: Conceptual model.
4.1 Safety culture and its dimension
Safety culture is not a new concept, and it took place in companies in the late 1980s
on larger safety culture. (Guldenmund, 2000) However, the fact that organizations on
the one hand want to be fully perceived on the market and are looking for ways to cut
costs and improve the quality of their operations. On the other hand, more attention is
paid to monitoring the activities by external business customers. In many scientific
and practical research, issues related to safety culture appear more frequently in the
organization. The benefits of "high" safety culture are being recognized by more and
more companies. (Zou, 2011)
According to (Ell et al., 2016), it is agreed that safety culture is not self - constrained,
but is part of the organization's culture. It is necessary to review the different concept
of security culture and its association with organizational culture. Safety culture is
generally considered as one of the structural aspects of safety that helps in
manifesting itself on a proper organizational level. The proper definition of the safety
culture as one of the important observable output is generally reflected in the context
of the organization's safe resources. It is stated by(Fan, Lo, Ching, & Kan, 2014) ,
(Linda Goldenhar; Matt Gillen; Scott Schneider; Steve Hecker, 2013)).
Safety culture is mainly linked to the company's climate through the whole concept is
mainly related with the term’s safety culture as well as safety climate that are utilized
interchangeably. It is quite imperative to make the proper distinction (Del Puerto,
Fontan-Pagan, Molina-Bas, & Mrozowski, 2016). The company's climate can be
considered as the product of some underlying assumptions and therefore it is
considered as a way of making the company's culture visible.
Safety Culture Safety Behaviour

On the other hand, it is shared by (Ding et al., 2016), that the company's climate could
be seen as the outer layers of the company's culture. The observed safety culture
therefore helps to emphasize continuity while its climate is considered to be
comparable to a perceived culture snapshot. It is found that a significant difference
that exists between these concepts is considered as a way which can be measured
easily. Moreover, the safety climate of the company generally corresponds with the
outer as well as visible and perceived layers of observable safety cultures. (Thierry
Meyer,) So, it can be measured significantly with the help of standardized
questionnaires. The safety culture that is observed is found to be more fundamental so
that the entire instance can be measured with the help of in-depth interviews as well
as observations.
As we know there are a few models of safety cultures such as total safety culture
model and the reciprocal safety culture model and more. According to the people,
procedures and technology model of (Reniers, Cremer, & Buytaert, 2011) we can
expect the safety culture to be made up of three dimensions: people, procedures and
technology. This model explains safety culture sub - dimensions for each of the
dimensions and is based on the model and literature review we know that safety
culture is relevant to warehouse safety.
The first dimension is people, the extent to which employees such as team leaders,
managers and employees are responsible for security(Reniers et al., 2011) and
communicate on a daily basis, particularly management, about security.(Cigularov,
Chen, & Rosecrance, 2010), as summarized in Table 2 below. They may reflect
workplace safety behaviour. Likewise, the extent to which employees apply their
knowledge of safety on a daily basis may reflect safe workplace behaviour. The
involvement of both staff(Reniers et al., 2011)(Veltri et al., 2013) and external
stakeholders in security policy development (Cigularov & Rosecrance, 2010) reflects
the importance of security in organizations and its resources. Organizational safety
culture reflects the overall priority given to security within an organization and the
extent to which open communication on safety is possible between employees
(Reniers et al., 2011).

Procedures are the second dimension. Procedures provide employees with insight into
how to deal with security - related issues, as summarized in Table 2 below. The
degree to which employees know what their safety expectations are can reflect safe
behaviour. (Reniers, Cremer, & Buytaert, 2011). Furthermore, safe workplace
behavior involves employees adhering to safety policies and safety marks (Flin,
Mearns, O’connor, & Bryden, 2000) The existence of safety policies and procedures
reflects the importance of safety just as safety marks are placed (Reniers et al., 2011).
The third dimension is technology. Storage may include filing cabinets, manuals in
company archives or libraries, or using modern technology such as databases, CD-
ROMs, floppy disks, tapestreamers, etc. Each of these should be able to handle the
addition of further information and the maximum amount of data that may be required
in the future, so it will be necessary to make decisions about what needs to be stored
and how long. Information processing issues will concern the integrity of the system
when a number of people want to use it at the same time and what happens when the
system is actually accessed by large numbers of people who all extract information at
the same time. We know that technology can reduce hazards and risks, as summarized
in Table 2 below. An important sub - dimension of a culture of safety is the
availability of equipment and facilities to improve safety. For instance, help prevent
dangerous situations from being minimized. The advance of technology could ensure
the safety of workers while they are working inside the warehouse. (Hofstra, Petkova,
Dullaert, Reniers, & Leeuw, 2017) For example, they using the forklift to carry the
staff instead of using their own hand. This could help them to avoid injure during
moving the items. On the others hand, the maintenance of machine is also an
important issue due to ensure the lifetime and safety of the machine.
Table 2 shows these dimensions and sub - dimensions of the safety culture. In the
next sections, we will examine to what extent warehouses are covered by the sub -
dimensions derived from the literature and whether other sub - dimensions should be
added to the list.