Free Guide for Improving PPE Usage

March 30, 2020

Providing employees with the best, most comfortable and stylish personal protective equipment (PPE) offers no guarantee that it will be worn when needed, leading to unnecessary injuries. While look and comfort goes a long way in getting employees to put their PPE on in the first place, during the work day, more is needed in order for employees to maintain a ‘safety first’ attitude.

That’s the reasoning behind Improve PPE Usage, a free, downloadable guide from SafeStart.

“Even with an exceptional PPE program in place, unless you address human factors in your PPE training, errors and decisions will be made that will result in injuries,” reads the guide’s introduction. “The bottom line is: When they’re rushing, frustrated, tired or complacent, they are more likely to make an unintentional error, make a poor decision, take a shortcut or simply forget their PPE.”

Beyond additional training, leadership support and enforcement, the guide identifies human factors that affect PPE usage and how those can be addressed.

“You have to help people understand how their states affect their safety, give them motivation and skills to improve and eventually help them build their own personal safety culture where they choose to wear their PPE, remember it and get in the habit of wearing it everywhere—at work and at home,” the guide reads. “In doing this, they also achieve a personal responsibility for PPE compliance.”

See also: Safestart