Warehouse Walkway Safety

With blind corners, stacks of pallets, and forklifts driving around, a warehouse presents various hazards for individuals navigating the space.  

Creating safe walkways throughout your facility will make your warehouse safer and easier to traverse for all individuals and vehicles. 

In this article, we’ll discuss multiple different solutions from floor paintings to safety barriers that can be implemented to create safe warehouse walkways. 

Pedestrian Walkways and Floor Markings

Employees navigating the warehouse floor are among the most vulnerable workers because of various tripping, collisions, and, yes, even fall hazards. 

Trusting your employees to “just be safe” while walking through your warehouse can only go so far. So, what do we do to help protect individuals? 

Painted Floor Markings

At the very least, painted floor markings will help direct pedestrians and help warn individuals of areas where forklifts are driving around or other heavy machinery moving parts. 

Using bright yellow paint makes these floor markings easily seen by all pedestrians and vehicle operators. 

Retractable Belt Barriers

If you are looking for more of a physical barrier between your employees and potential hazards but aren’t looking to install a guardrail system around your whole warehouse. Then, retractable belt barriers are the go-to solution. 

With a retractable belt barrier, you can place these in most places throughout your warehouse to create a pathway for pedestrians to walk. The useful feature of these systems is that they are easily set up and taken down so that you can move them around as you need to create the optimal safe and efficient walkway for your employees.

Self-Closing Safety Gates

Now, walkways are all well and good, but at the entrance to these walkways they tend to be wide open. What happens if a person is using the designated walkway, but as they exit a forklift or other machinery is there? 

This is where a self-closing safety gate would help save the day and help prevent this hazard. With a self-closing safety gate, the user has to stop and engage with the gate in order to open it. This brief second of pause gives the individual time to assess their surroundings to ensure they’re safe as they move forward.

Warehouse Guardrails

Warehouse guardrails or impact barriers create a physical separation between moving equipment and workers. Machines such as forklifts and conveyor systems can cause injury to passersby.  

While painted lines or retractable belt barriers can help regulate where people walk and where machines operate. They don’t physically prevent a person or forklift from contact with one another. 

Warehouse guardrails reduce the risk of accidents or injuries by absorbing and redirecting energy to minimize damage to the machine and protecting an employee who may be walking or working on the other side of the barrier. 

Warehouse Safety Bollards

Safety bollards are designed to help protect your machinery, structures, and people from accidents or injuries. 

Bollards can be used as a low-cost barrier around corners of warehouses, shelving aisles, and other parts of designated walking paths.

In Review

Now all these products are designed to protect individuals while navigating a warehouse. There is one product that can’t be purchased, and that’s properly training and communicating to your team about safe practices when navigating the warehouse. 

Taking the time to coach your team about staying safe even in the most basic of situations will go a long way in preventing injuries within your warehouse. 

If you have any questions or are looking to outfit your warehouse with these different safety products, please contact our fall protection specialists to get started today!