10 Ideas for National Forklift Safety Day
National Forklift Safety Day is on June 12th this year. This day is a great opportunity to bring forklift safety to everyone’s “top of mind”. Now is the time to prepare a worthwhile day for your team.
If you search National Forklift Safety Day online, you’ll find hundreds of safety tips. The hard part is turning those tips into worthwhile action. That’s why we’ve created this list of 10 ideas you can implement on National Forklift Safety Day to make forklift safety a priority.
You’ve got 2 months to make it happen, so let’s get started.
1) Have a Special Safety Meeting
If you don’t have regular safety meetings, use this as an opportunity to have one.
If you do have regular safety meetings, do something different to make this one special. The more significant you can make the meeting, the more importance your staff will place on forklift safety. Ideas to accomplish this include involving additional people or combining teams. Invite high level executives that rarely participate in regular safety meetings. Have multiple shifts attend a meeting together so people will look forward to seeing team members from other shifts.
2) Create a Contest or Quiz
Have a competition that tests safety knowledge. You could do something small, like a paper quiz in the break room, or something large, like a pretend game show. Have a worthwhile prize, and try to get as many people involved as possible.
We created a National Forklift Safety Day Quiz that you can use at your facility. We also have this National Forklift Safety Day Word Search.
3) Celebrate Success
Have you had no safety issues since last year? Is there someone on the team who has done a great job? Is there a particular example of good safety practices that is coming to mind?
Celebrate their success with a shared story, award, or reward. Embrace the culture of safety you’re creating.
4) Start a New Safety Practice
Let’s admit it, a lot of times safety is about doing routine small things correctly, and it’s not always the most exciting thing to talk about. Sometimes it’s hard to introduce a new safety procedures because it’s hard to capture your team’s interest. National Forklift Safety Day gives you a reason to launch an initiative one a day when you have your team’s interest. Combine it with some of the other ideas on this list, and your new safety practice will have momentum on its first day.
5) Hand Out Special Apparel or Equipment
Get a special “National Forklift Safety Day 2018” shirt made. Use this opportunity as a chance to distribute new safety vests, glasses, etc. Every time your teams wears/uses these items they’ll be reminded of forklift safety. In 10 years, this years National Forklift Safety Day t-shirt will show years of experience.
6) Renew Training
Use this day as a chance to review some safety training. If you do this annually, it will be easy to keep track of infrequent training requirements and standards. Make sure your organization’s standards are being met. Review procedures like your pre-shift checklist. With an ever-changing workforce, this is a great chance to make sure everyone is on the same page.
7) Make some Posters
Safety Posters are some of the most common tools of the trade. Fresh safety posters will break up the routine and remind us of safety topics we might not think of often. You can even create custom posters for your specific work environments. Create one for every day of the week National Forklift Safety Day falls on. They can be completely customized and highly engaging. You can even tie them into a contest from #2.
8) Do Something Fun
Some of our business partners have forklift operating competitions every National Forklift Safety Day. Their employees look forward to this even all year, and practice going into the event. If you were to attend, you’d immediately be able to tell that forklift safety has become embedded in their company culture. Take the time to plan something unique. If you create a fun forklift safety event that fits into your company culture, you’ll know that you’ve solidified the idea in your company and have true buy-in from your team.
9) Involve Company Communications
Get National Forklift Safety Day and all the activities you’ve planned featured in your internal company newsletter and communications. You have 2 months, so don’t wait until it’s too late! Take some pictures of things that happen that day so you can share them with team members that may not have been able to participate in every activity.
10) Free Food
This one is a given. People like free food. Add some free food to the previously mentioned ideas, and your day will be a home run!
Interested in Forklift Safety? Visit our Forklift Safety Hub for more resources.