Our hands are our most important asset, among other features. And even with this in mind, there are a lot of reports showing that workers don’t follow proper hand safety guidelines, and hence become prone to injuries that can vary from minor to major, life-threatening ones. In this blog, let’s discuss a few important facts to encourage proper hand protection at the workplace.
1- The Risk of Cuts and Lacerations
About 30% of workers experience injuries like minor cuts and lacerations every year, most of these injuries occur to the hands. Unless an injury is serious enough to warrant a trip to the hospital, workers are told to brush off the injury and work through the pain. This, in the end, can lead to further injuries and even disrupt workflow as workers become uncomfortable performing certain tasks as their injury keeps getting triggered to cause pain.
This is one reason why it’s important to use proper hand protection in the workplace.
2- The Hand is One of the Most Common Body Part Prone to Injuries
According to a BLS report, there are about 150,000 hand-related injuries at workplaces on an average, with 143,000 being reported in 2015. With the rate that the economy is growing, one can only assume this amount has grown over the years. The injury may not be deadly, it can surely make your day-to-day tasks difficult. Moreover, since the hands are always busy in performing either one task or another, you always run the risk of opening up your wound instead of getting it some rest and having it slowly heal. This can lead to further discomfort and cause you to stop working altogether.
3- Injuries Cost a Lot
As discussed above, hand injuries can cause a lot of discomfort and may even lead to stopping you from working altogether. There have been reports of workers taking days off not because they want to but were required to as their hand injuries were not allowing them to work. This leads to employees taking too many sick days and getting paid less than intended due to losing a lot of workdays.
Hand injuries can lead not only to loss of income for the employees but also cause problems in the workplace as certain individuals may not be present to perform certain tasks at which they’re skilled, due to their injuries. And this can disrupt the productive workflow.
4- The Solution is Simple
Reading all the above scenarios, it’s evident that hand injuries can become a threat. But it’s so easy to fix that problem from occurring at all. One of the biggest motivations to use hand protection is that it’s simple. All you need to do is wear leather safety gloves and you’ll get the amount of safety you need for your hands to stay away from injuries.
OSHA’s hand injury stats have revealed that about 70% of workers avoid wearing hand gloves which leads to injuries. The only solution is to wear those safety gloves whenever you’re performing a hard task that requires you to handle dangerous machines or materials.
5- Training is Important
The best way to encourage hand protection is to hold a minor training session at the beginning of every day or every week. In this session, your safety advisor or a supervisor at the workplace can give a small talk on how hand safety is important and workers should use all the PPE they’re getting from the factory. Furthermore, this session can even address whatever violations you’ve noticed in the previous day regarding following a proper safety protocol without pointing out the perpetrator. This can serve as a reminder and lead to motivation for the employees to follow your safety guidelines.
Select Appropriate Hand Safety Equipment
If you need to ensure your workers are following proper safety protocols, you need to provide them with the right kind of PPE and set down strict rules for them to use this equipment. Elite Leather Creations has the answer to all your PPE related concerns, from assembly line gloves to those appropriate for welding, mechanic, and impact gloves. ELC has a wide range of safety equipment to ensure proper workplace protection.
These are the facts you need to encourage hand protection at the workplace. Remember that your hands are the most important feature to perform any action, and keeping them safe is what leads to performing better.
