The Underestimated Power of Good Housekeeping Training
Good housekeeping training plays a critical role in minimizing material handling incidents, boosting morale, and cultivating a healthier environment for all.
- By Karen D. Hamel
- Oct 11, 2023
Forklift certifications and hazard communication training often top the checklist of required trainings for material handling employees. Chances are good that most also receive training on fall prevention, the use of ladders, personal protective equipment, and the safe use of sharp tools.
Too often, good housekeeping isn’t addressed during onboarding or even in refresher trainings. It’s also commonly overlooked or gets pushed aside in favor of other trainings that are required or take a higher priority within the organization.
Let’s face it: for most people, cleaning up has been a dreaded chore since childhood, regardless of the attempts by many children’s television shows to serenade viewers with clever songs to make clean up just as much fun as playtime. In the workplace, there usually aren’t cleanup songs, and it can be very easy to let a mess accumulate when production goals or other deadlines need to be met.
Introducing good housekeeping as an independent program and conducting a separate training for it adds one more thing to schedules and can sometimes be viewed by employees as a punishment. Incorporating it into other trainings makes it a component of those already existing programs.
Keeping workplaces tidy does more than provide a morale boost. It also helps to reduce risk by eliminating hazards that are caused by clutter and unorganized spaces.
Ergonomics
Stocking shelves, packing boxes and filling trailers are just a few of the tasks that keep material handlers in nearly constant motion. It’s also a primary reason why sprains and strains are the number one cause of lost worktime injuries each year.
While incorrect lifting and awkward motions are the leading reasons for injury, lack of housekeeping is commonly a contributing factor. Empty boxes left in aisles create tripping hazards. Loose packing materials such as shrink wrap and banding are slippery and can get tangled between employees’ feet. Left unchecked, these wastes increase the risk of slips, trips and falls that cause soft tissue injury, lacerations, concussions and broken bones.
Good housekeeping is sometimes as simple as having an adequate number of recycling bins located in areas where packaging waste is created. This allows operators to quickly and conveniently pick up shrink wrap, banding straps and other packing materials as they are generated and put them in a pre-designated area.
This article originally appeared in the October 2023 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.