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Warehouse training checklist for peak season
A warehouse training checklist for peak season splits training into five moments: before day one, before the first shift, the first week, during peak and after peak. Each item has an owner, a deadline and a record that proves it happened.
Peak season fills the warehouse floor with people who have never worked there before. In Spain alone, Randstad expected transport and logistics to sign almost 160,000 contracts during the Christmas 2025 campaign, out of 452,950 across all sectors.¹ Most of those people are pickers, packers, loaders and forklift operators who start in the busiest weeks of the year.
New people are also the ones most likely to get hurt. Workers in their first month on a job have over three times the risk of a lost-time injury compared with colleagues who have been there more than a year, according to ten years of claims data analysed by the Institute for Work & Health in Canada.²
In this article we give you a warehouse training checklist organised by moment, with the items, the owner and the evidence to keep for each one. You can use it as it is or adapt it to your sites.
The training that works in March rarely survives November. Three things change at the same time:
The legal duty does not relax either. The EU framework directive on health and safety requires employers to train every worker on recruitment, on a change of job and when new equipment is introduced.³ In Spain, the law adds that this applies whatever the type or length of the contract,⁴ so a three-week temporary picker is owed the same induction as a permanent one.
This is where most of the work happens, and where most teams start too late.
The induction should be short, specific to the site and finished before anyone touches a scanner or a pallet. A realistic structure fits in under an hour:
| Module | Content | Minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Site layout and traffic | Walkways, pedestrian and vehicle segregation, exclusion zones around forklifts and docks | 10 |
| Emergencies | Exits, assembly point, first aid, who to call | 5 |
| Personal protective equipment | What to wear, where to get it, how to report damage | 5 |
| Manual handling | Safe lifting for the actual loads of the role | 10 |
| Site rules that cause most incidents | The three to five rules this warehouse cannot afford to see broken | 10 |
| Reporting | How to report a near miss or an injury, and why it matters | 5 |
| Tools for the task | Scanner, labels and the basic steps of the warehouse system for their role | 10 |
Close the induction with a short check of understanding, a few questions per module, and keep the result. A signature on an attendance sheet proves someone was in the room, not that they understood what to do.
A checklist without owners turns into a list of good intentions. This is how we would split it in a typical warehouse:
| Item | When | Owner | Evidence to keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| Role and risk list | 6 weeks before | Operations + health and safety | Updated role list |
| Updated procedures | 4-6 weeks before | Site manager | Procedure version and date |
| Content in the right languages | 3-4 weeks before | Training team | Course versions per language |
| Buddies and shift leads briefed | 2 weeks before | Shift managers | List of buddies per shift |
| Induction completed | Before first shift | Training team | Completion record per person |
| Forklift assessment on site | Before operating | Health and safety |
The column that usually fails is the last one. When the labour inspectorate or an auditor asks who received which training, the answer has to be a record per person, not a pile of sign-in sheets from different sites.
Picture this. Forty agency pickers start on a Monday in late November. Twelve of them are on nights, when the training coordinator is not on site. The induction is a slide deck from last year that still shows the old dock layout, and in practice the plan for the night shift is "stay close to whoever has been here longest".
Avoiding that scene depends on doing the Moment 1 work weeks before, and on having training that can reach every shift without the coordinator being physically there. Short modules that people complete before their first shift, in their language, with a record of who finished them, solve most of it.
That preparation does not have to start from a blank page. Platforms like Vidext turn the procedures and recordings a warehouse already has into short courses for each role, and nothing reaches the floor until someone from your team has approved it. If you want to go deeper on the content for each job, we cover it in our guide to health and safety training in logistics, from warehouse to delivery.
Most peak season incidents with new starters are not caused by people who refuse to follow the rules. They come from people who were never shown the rules properly, on a shift where nobody had time to show them.
A warehouse training checklist only works if it starts weeks before the first temporary worker arrives and ends with a record per person. For the onboarding side of the same problem, see how other logistics teams onboard drivers and warehouse operators with video and AI. The teams that get through peak safely are the ones that treated training as part of planning capacity, not as something to fit in once people are already on the floor.
At minimum: site layout and traffic routes, emergency procedures, personal protective equipment, manual handling for the specific role, the site rules linked to the most common incidents, how to report near misses and the basic use of scanners or the warehouse system. Temporary workers are owed the same induction as permanent staff.
Four to six weeks before the first new starters arrive. That leaves time to update procedures, prepare content in the right languages and brief the buddies and shift leads who will support new people.
In the European Union, yes. Directive 89/391/EEC requires employers to provide health and safety training on recruitment.³ In Spain, article 19 of the Occupational Risk Prevention Law (Ley 31/1995) makes it explicit: training is due at the moment of hiring, whatever the type or length of the contract.⁴
A previous training certificate proves the person was trained, but not that they can operate your equipment safely in your layout. Good practice is to check the certificate and also run a practical assessment on site before authorising them to drive.
With training that does not depend on the trainer being present: short modules people complete before the shift, a named buddy on nights and a shift lead who signs off the first tasks. The record should show night shift workers completed the same content as day shift workers.
¹ La campaña de Navidad dejará más de 9.500 contratos en Baleares, según Randstad - Última Hora ² Study finds persistence of higher injury risk for new workers - Institute for Work & Health ³ Council Directive 89/391/EEC on the introduction of measures to encourage improvements in the safety and health of workers at work - EUR-Lex ⁴ Ley 31/1995, de 8 de noviembre, de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales - BOE
| 55 |
| Assessment and authorisation |
| First-week sign-off | End of week one | Shift lead | Observation sign-off |
| Mid-season updates | When a process changes | Training team | Who completed the update and when |
| End-of-peak review | January | Operations + training | Short lessons-learned note |
Programme to promote permanent employment of qualified young people within the framework of the National Youth Guarantee System. Vidext has received a grant of €25,401 awarded by LABORA (Valencian Employment and Training Service) for the permanent hiring in 2024 of qualified young person(s) registered in the National Youth Guarantee System, an action eligible for co-financing by the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) 2021-2027 or any other European Union fund. Expediente ECOGJU/2024/550/46. This publication is made in compliance with the transparency obligations established by Spanish Law 19/2013 of 9 December.
