Remember those 3 Important Yearly Meetings

Warehouse and Operations as a Career

Hello all, Marty here with Warehouse and Operations as a Career. I want to thank you for checking in with us today, and I think I’d like to talk a little about Ethics, maybe a little on Workplace Violence and our Reporting. Earlier this week I was talking with a gentleman that had just came out of his Companies yearly meeting on Business Ethics. Several of the larger facilities I deal with have these little gatherings once or twice a year. I think we as warehousemen kind of feel meetings like these don’t really have anything to do with what we’re trying to accomplish each shift, but I’d like to look a bit deeper and take a quick look at what we can take from them, maybe see them in a little better light. The companies meeting is going to talk along the lines of something like:

Business ethics (also known as corporate ethics) is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business conduct and is relevant to the conduct of individuals and entire organizations.^[1] These ethics originate from individuals, organizational statements or from the legal system. These norms, values, ethical, and unethical practices are what is used to guide business. They help those businesses maintain a better connection with their stakeholders.^[2] I found that at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_ethics

You know, as warehousemen I feel we do play just as big a part regarding ethics as the Salesforce, Finance people and Merchandisers, Ethics and doing what’s right is everyone’s job. I’ve been out on delivery routes before and had the customer or even just people on the street as I was unloading offer me xx number of dollars for that box of product there. We all know that would have just been wrong to do. I heard about a restaurant owner that asked a driver once to mark the item short on truck, leave it with him and mark it off his COD amount. And even things like overages on the truck, that’s when the warehouse accidently selects an extra case of something and its loaded on the truck, it’d be wrong for the driver to sell it off the truck to a customer and pocket the money. We’d probably call that stealing and I think that’s what the definition above was referring to when stating “conduct of individuals and entire organizations”. There’s no way around the word stealing here, what we just described is theft and we all know its wrong and we’ll probably get caught. I’ve known people that’s lost their jobs over taking a donut from their company. Wither we’re talking a dollar or a thousand dollars we need to think about giving up our yearly salary for that one bad decision, that math just doesn’t add up too me! I guess we ventured off on bad decisions for a second, I’ll get back to ethics, but I hope everyone agrees with my math there. Another example on ethics could be As a order selector we all understand it’s our job to correctly select the right product in the right quantity for the customers order. But, we’ve all gone to that slot, had an order for 4 cases and only 3 cases were on the pallet. There we are faced with an ethical dilemma. Do we pull the 3 and ignore the 4^th one and toss the label or do what’s right and grab a replenishment guy to drop another pallet so we can grab that 4^th one? Hopefully we follow what’s right, have strong values and chose to use our ethical practices and not unethical practices, right? You hear me talk pretty often about Unloading or Lumping here at WAOC. I think the Unloading position is a great position to break into the Operations world, we can learn so much about freight performing those tasks. It’s also, or use to be, a bit questionable regarding good ethics. Back before technology helped us keep up with schedules, metrics, Cs/Hr, Trailer times etc it was really easy to cheat your company, vendors, truck drivers and your company. It used to all be pretty much cash, which meant it was really easy for a lumper and a driver to cut a deal between themselves to unload a few pallets, pocket the discounted rate and go on down the road. Thankfully the technologies today gives us a wealth of productivity information and helps track those transactions. Here again though its up to us as employees to conduct ourselves with values, morals and in an ethical manner.

See how those meetings can be important to our tasks and jobs on the floor. When I hear someone say something like I just wasted 2 hours in a meeting that had nothing to do we me We need to recognize that rarely, really rarely if ever, is our employer going to spend the time and wages for us to attend something that has nothing to do with us!

Another one of those meetings I hear a lot of grumbling about is the yearly Workplace Violence get together, oh and that’s where the speaker may add a segment about Sexual Harassment as well. I think its important to remember the world we live in today. We hear almost weekly about an issue at a school and bullying or a large fight at a mall, and an incident of road rage getting out of hand. Employers have to be concerned about aggression on the docks, it just can’t be tolerated. I know of a company putting together Active Shooter training right now for their employees. Planning is really the only thing we can do as employees and employers to prepare for such actions. Sexual Harassment is just as important, I feel everyone should be comfortable in the workplace. To me its more than a right or a law, it’s morally and ethically each of our responsibility to ensure our peers and associates feel safe at work. As you can see, these meetings aren’t a waste of our time and we can use them to advance personally and professionally in our careers and our lives!

We here at WAOC believes its our responsibility to perform our tasks better than the person beside us and have the want to get noticed by our management team right? If we are always interested in doing the right thing, using good moral judgement, utilizing good ethical practices in our tasks and duties we will get the recognition for it and hey, that’s what we’re after is being noticed for that next task or promotion! I think we all understand what’s meant by Workplace Violence and Sexual Harassment. We know we should watch our words, sometimes words can hurt us as much as actions. Anyone that has a significant other or spouse can attest to that. We shouldn’t be surprised when something we’ve said or that loud outburst on the floor has cost us our job. And let’s face it men and women, we know how to treat each other and more importantly how we should act and should not act. We should, and can, control those situations we put ourselves in and stay away from those that we know not to be involved in. I’ve never understood how someone can be surprised to find themselves in a harassment situation, everyone of them really knew they were doing wrong!

I got a little off course today, but there’s a few of my opinions I guess. Those subjects are important to anyone employed and to all of us as associates Remember we’re on Facebook and Twitter @whseandops and I’m having a lot of fun on the Facebook group Warehouse Equipment Operator Community too. Oh, and I’ll include a link to our WAOC Store front in todays show notes as well, just in case you’d like a coffee mug or tee shirt of your own. https://www.teepublic.com/user/waoc By the way all proceeds from the store front is donated to a charity, right now it’s the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Great Strides Walk! And for a free plug I’ll link a donation page for the team I’m associated with this year should you like to donate a little to a great cause! http://fightcf.cff.org/site/TR/GreatStrides/90_Northeast_Texas_Dallas?team_id=70512&pg=team&fr_id=6876&_ga=2.47386343.1509921056.1522891140-532689123.1522891140

As always let’s leave each other today with a Safety thought, “Safety is a critical part of longevity and the development of confidence. The smoother a shift runs the more efficient and productive it can be!”