Page 39 - Occupational Health & Safety, February 2018

ful changes in behavior— and decrease non- compliance—not only must better gloves be provided. Workers and gatekeepers who manage PPE selection or wear gloves need education concerning worker habits and the triggers behind non-compliance.
Understanding Non-Compliance
Let’s take a step back—just how dangerous is non-compliance?
Every moment a worker’s hands are ex- posed, they are at risk. There are some two dozen bones in each hand, along with mus- cles, tendons, ligaments, arteries, veins and nerves—simply put, a lot can go wrong, and it can be serious. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than one million workers go to the emergency room with hand injuries each year, and about 110,000 hand injuries result in lost time.1 The average hand injury results in six days off work, the average claim is about $6,000, and the average worker’s compensation claim in $7,500. Big picture, the hands in- cur 13 percent of all industrial injuries, and cuts, in particular, can be costly – hitting employers with an average financial im- pact of almost $22,000 per incident. More specifically, the National Safety Council re- ports the direct cost of a laceration to the hand is $10,000 and a severed tendon more than $70,000.2
That information is not lost on PPE gatekeepers—those responsible for speci- fying and selecting the protective equip- ment for workers. The global PPE market was about $38 billion in 2015, with gloves accounting for 23 percent, or about $8.7 billion. The market is projected to exceed $68 billion by 2024.3 Purchasing PPE and getting it into the workforce is happening. So where’s the disconnect? Why are there still so many hand injuries?
Inhibited by Habit
So what’s habit got to do with all this? Here’s a common misperception about non-compli- ance: according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Safety and Health Administration/OSHA), “70 percent of workers who suffered hand injuries were not wearing gloves when they suffered the injury. The other 30 percent were wearing gloves that were inadequate, damaged or the wrong type of glove for the hazard.4
It’s not that 70 percent of workers never wear gloves (OSHA puts that number at
about 36 percent, still unacceptably high). No, the more significant issue is workers re- moving gloves at critical points throughout the workday. And that behavior can be tied to habit.
Workers may wear gloves for carrying large pieces of equipment or materials, then remove them without thinking to pick up tools or hardware. That’s a holdover behav- ior from a time when bulky work gloves made more precise movements difficult or impossible. It’s not unusual to see workers remove gloves to sign invoices or tracking documents or to check their phones, and all of those behaviors can become habitual.
Therefore, across the globe, it’s in the employer’s interest to carry out evaluations and determine which hand protection solutions are most appropriate for their need—taking a proactive step in eliminat- ing the challenge factors that cause work- ers to habitually remove gloves in the first place. Then, employers and manufacturers can help by providing data from the various test methods to help with glove selection, and education concerning PPE compliance and habits to take proactive steps to go past simply providing the glove and instead tak- ing actionable steps to combat poor habits and non-compliance. As such, both em- ployers and manufactures are supporting the important focus on worker safety.
Where We Stand—
and Where We Go Next
We know significant advances in technol-
ogy can drive behavioral changes, so this is a positive step toward improved compli- ance. But better gloves are only part of the solution. To break bad habits, employers must identify and focus on keystone hab- its, uncovering the cues that lead workers to remove their gloves, and where possible, instilling practices that encourage higher levels of compliance.
If we are going to truly redefine the comfort zone of today’s worker, it will re- quire technological advances to gloves along with improved education around safety practices and a far more thoughtful, proactive approach to changing behavior and breaking counterproductive habits.
Steve Genzer is President of the Industrial Global Business Unit at Ansell.
REFERENCES
1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; https://www. bls.gov/iif/
2. 2014 USA National Safety Council. 2014 injury data.
3. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press- release/global-personal-protective-equiptment- ppe-market
4. United States Department of Labor. Oc- cupational Safety and Health Administration, 59 FR 16339 April 6, 1994 (preamble). Available online at: https://www.osha.gov/ pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_ table=PREAMBLES&p_id=1021
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FEBRUARY 2018 | Occupational Health & Safety 33
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