Arcadian Organic & Natural Meat Company – Forklift awareness strategy

Transcript 

Matthew Fegan​ 

We're always trying to continually improve safety as part of our culture here at Arcadian Organic, so we really wanted to make sure that people were safe in their environment. To do that, we needed people to respect the forklift exclusion zones and the best way to do that, we believed, was to implement the Halo System around the forklift. 

The Halo System is a red light beam, which is emitted from the forklift in every direction around the fork to ensure that nobody comes within that exclusion zone. Ever since implementing the new systems, I've noticed people are a lot more observant of their environment, so the signage played a big role in that as well as the Halo System. I personally feel safer in the workplace knowing that I have a visual representation of what's going on around me, not just the audio cue from when a forklift's reversing. 

The first step in implementing a workplace health and safety initiative is to collect and track data. So you want to know how many medically treated injuries and lost time injuries you have, first-aid administered, and then after you've implemented the new system, you track and monitor the lost time injuries and medically treated injuries to make sure that they've gone down. 

What I've learned throughout the process is that there's always need for improvement when it comes to safety. You can always continually improve. No matter what the small things are that you can improve, there's always processes that you can implement to make things better and safer. 

Anyone can be a Safety Champion. It's up to you to take that first step.