As one of North America’s largest (and oldest) independent wholesale distributors of business and office supply products, S.P. Richards partners with Ergodyne to help protect the people at the heart of this business-critical operation.

The reason I wake up every morning and what drives me is my employees and making sure they get home safely and providing the best possible product for our customers.

My name is Zach Hampton. I'm here in Saint Paul, I'm the Distribution Center Manager here. I lead the day-to-day operations for all warehouse activities, inbound receiving, and outbound deliveries, and I lead a crew of about 30 different employees.

It's a good feeling knowing that you have a company behind you who does have such a strong reputation. But honestly, it's your results. They speak for themselves and our customers as much as they love us and our history. We're in a results-driven world and it's "what have you done for me today?"

So we don't want to put them in a place to where they have to do unsafe things to achieve quota. It all starts with training, honestly, and it has teaching people the right way to do things and not to take shortcuts. So the most common issues we see here or hazards, it has to be the forklifts. Avoiding people getting hit by those. Repetitive motion, lifting heavy boxes. Just proper lifting technique. That's one of the biggest ways we combat those.

But what you see everybody in our warehouse wearing all the time, any time they walk outside of that office door or breakroom doors is the hi-vis vest. They're everywhere and they're paramount to keeping our people safe and keeping them visible. And I think that just them knowing that we have their best interests and safety at heart, it goes a long way.