For your information
You are being redirected to one of our divisional subsites which contains more detailed information on the required division. To navigate back to the main Invicta Group site, please click the link found in the footer at the bottom of the page.
5 warehouse safety features that improve productivity
9th October 2025
Quick Quote
Contact Mick Coyne
To get a quotation or arrange a free site survey - Call Mick Coyne on
-
UK
Current location:
Quick Quote
Contact Mick Coyne
-
UK
Current location:
Safety isn’t often considered in the same sentence as productivity. Yet despite this, the two are inextricably linked—and particularly within the world of warehouse storage. In a high-paced environment filled with heavy goods and heavy vehicles, accidents can cost both money and lives.
The features and ideas below have an obvious benefit for either safety or productivity. Yet the positive effects they can have go beyond this, and towards improving the wellbeing of workers. The result is a safer and better coordinated warehouse—and a boon for warehouses big and small.
Line markings
Line markings are an often underappreciated aspect of warehouse infrastructure. What may be seen as a basic feature or even ignored by some can be extremely beneficial, both in terms of directing traffic and demarcating areas for pedestrians and vehicles. Making the best use of them requires both good maintenance and a holistic view of how they contribute to warehouse safety.
Line markings can be used to direct both pedestrian and vehicle traffic, and mark our clear areas for each, something that’s important for avoiding collisions. However, good use of line markings can also avoid traffic bottlenecks in the warehouse. Keeping these maintained—and changing them as the warehouse environment changes—ensures they remain clear, visible, and effective.
This applies not just to areas with vehicle traffic, but also to areas like walkways, production or packing areas, and areas containing hazardous materials. They provide a quick point of reference that improves situational and environmental awareness, and instils good working practices in operatives. The result is not just a safer warehouse, but one where people and vehicles move more efficiently around it, and get where they need to be more quickly.
Better layouts
A similar but distinct factor in both safety and productivity is the layout of the warehouse. Warehouses are often augmented with additional racking to cater to seasonal peaks, or rearranged to support new SKUs. This can be done without considering the knock-on effects to other aspects of the warehouse, and may compound issues with the original warehouse layout. The result can lead to bottlenecks and inefficiencies that slow down work, and put people at risk.
While difficult due to the 24/7 nature of many warehouses, taking a step back and reconsidering the layout and makeup of a warehouse can be extremely helpful. As well as optimising traffic flows, more capacity can be added closer to packing areas, and SKUs can be moved to reduce travel times for popular items. Newer racking formats can also be added to improve storage density, such as narrow-aisle pallet racking, or cantilever racking for awkwardly-sized items, which are often stored inappropriately.
Warehouse automation
There’s an obvious risk factor people may point to when considering warehouse automation: collisions. The addition of large autonomous vehicles, packing robots, and other forms of automation might seem to pose a risk to personnel, and come hand-in-hand with staff layoffs. Yet automation can actually improve safety, and be used to augment warehouse productivity, without putting lives or livelihoods at risk.
Automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) and pallet shuttle racking can both make racking more efficient, and protect workers who might otherwise have to access pallets at height, either using large forklifts or walkways. Autonomous vehicles meanwhile can store and move pallets quickly and easily, and picking and packing robots avoid the repetitive strain injuries that can occur among workers.
Safety is also baked into autonomous vehicles. Sensor arrays ensure that any free-moving vehicles detect obstacles and stop prior to a collision, while other robots can be configured to follow strict guidelines (or in the case of AS/RS, navigate the rack face). This does not necessarily pose a threat to employees, but rather reduces the number of strenuous and repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus their efforts and attention elsewhere.
Advanced WMS
Warehouse management systems (WMS) are already at the core of most warehouses, but their full potential isn’t always being utilised. A hallmark of modern WMS’ is their ability to connect with a variety of other systems and sensors around the warehouse, which they can use to track and coordinate different resources.
A WMS can be used for advanced inventory management, tracking not only the addition and removal of pallets or products, but their position within and movement through the warehouse. The use of QR codes or NFC chips together with handheld scanners can increase the accuracy of inventory management, while wireless technology can be used for wayfinding, directing operatives to pallet locations.
All of this can have a positive effect on warehouse safety. The WMS can optimise traffic flows in much the same way Google does for roads, directing people along different walkways and aisles to avoid jams or collisions. Making things easier for workers also has a happy side effect: they tend to be more content and less frustrated, leading to better productivity and a higher quality of work.
Warehouse lighting
Perhaps the most obvious and yet least appreciated contributor to warehouse safety is effective warehouse lighting. Even in an age of ubiquitous LEDs, a surprising number of warehouses are still lit with either fluorescent or HID bulbs. Fluorescent lights were popular because of their relatively low energy consumption, while HID lights are simply very cheap.
However, both of these options have significant drawbacks. Fluorescent lights only operate well in specific environmental conditions, with periods of high or low temperatures dramatically shortening their lifespan. HID lights meanwhile are very limited in terms of colour and intensity, and have a shorter operating life than other options.
Switching to LED lights not only makes financial sense, but also improves safety and accuracy. LED lights are brighter and colder, reducing fatigue and fully illuminating all parts of a warehouse. This combination can reduce accidents from low visibility, and improve picking accuracy—all of which can make a substantial cumulative difference to a business’s bottom line.
–
Individually, many of the ideas above may not seem to relate much to safety or productivity. Taken cumulatively, however, they can be of substantial value to warehouse managers and operatives. A safer warehouse is by definition a more productive warehouse, both due to the happiness and wellbeing of employees, and the avoidance of accidents that cost time and money. Implementing these changes can be a net positive for businesses—even if it means putting work on a brief pause.
Accreditations & Affiliations
Share/Like this page