Why Don’t Workers Wear Their PPE?
More than adhering to legal or safety standards, wearing PPE is important to ensure the safety of employees. If this is the case, then why is it that some workers choose not to wear protective gear?
All the reasons can be categorized into two:
1. Employer Deficiency
Employers must take responsibility if their workers do not wear PPE for the following reasons:
– Lack of safety training: Workers may choose not to wear protective gear if they do not understand the importance of wearing PPE. The “whys” and “how to” of wearing PPE must be communicated to employees.
– Insufficient or ill-fitting PPE: It is the employer’s duty to supply safety gear that fit to every employee that is exposed to work hazards.
– Lack of encouragement/enforcement
2. Employee Objection
Sometimes, even with sufficient training, employees still do not wear PPE. Employees could give any of the following reasons for refusing to wear safety gear:
– Gear is uncomfortable (e.g. too hot, too bulky) making it harder for the worker to move thus affecting productivity
– PPE is unattractive
Effective communication is the key to worker safety. Employers must never dismiss PPE complaints as frivolous. In some instances, a little adjustment is all that is needed to make the gear more comfortable to use. If the adjustments cannot be made, it’s important to communicate to the workers that not wearing PPE could not only result in occupational violations but in serious or fatal injury.
Videos and accident investigations may seem tedious and boring at safety meetings but I know from experience that this information does sink in over time.
The message needs to get across that safety personal protective equipment is for the worker’s protection and by seeing what has happened to the unfortunate people in the past will help both management and employees understand the reasoning that we need to wear our PPE.
Terry Smeader
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Tags: PPE, safety clothing, workers
October 21st, 2014 at 4:15 pm
Sometimes when an employee fails to wear the proper or required PPE it is because that they, the worker, feel that the PPE is not really necessary.
There are times when the math requires PPE above and beyond what ‘logically’ appears to be needed. In these cases, the employer needs to have the mechanism to over-ride what the math says.
There are times when the worker feels that PPE is above and beyond what ‘logically’ appears to be needed based upon their experience. In some cases there experience has been tainted by never having the need for PPE occur due to ‘good luck’ while in other cases the worker makes a false assumption based upon their experience.
In all cases workers need to understand that their only choice is to use the required PPE or to stop work and resolve the differences between the required PPE and what they, the worker, feel is the correct PPE.
October 21st, 2014 at 6:37 pm
Very well said G.W.
This is where good communication skills come in to play as management needs to have a system to “show” employees the necessity of the required PPE.
it must be shown why the PPE is necessary through videos and past experience so the workers want to wear the PPE and have their beliefs and reasons to.
This is not always obvious until some one gets hurt badly or worse.