By Gina Tsiropoulos
In a recent survey by KIMBERLY-CLARK PROFESSIONAL*, 89 percent of safety professionals said they had observed workers not wearing safety equipment when they should have been. Twenty-nine percent said this had happened on numerous occasions.
This high rate of noncompliance with PPE protocols presents a serious threat to worker health and safety. While the reasons for noncompliance are varied, the threat to workers is clear-cut. Without the proper use of PPE, they are at risk of serious injury or even death.
The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) requires the use of personal protective equipment to reduce employee exposure to hazards when engineering and administrative controls are not feasible or effective. Yet, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that of the workers who sustained a variety of on-the-job injuries, the vast majority were not wearing PPE.
It is therefore no surprise that 78 percent of respondents said workplace accidents and injuries were the concerns most likely to keep them up at night.
Worker compliance with safety protocols was also cited as the top workplace safety issue. Twenty-eight percent of respondents chose this, while 21 percent selected "fewer workers." "Insufficient management support for health and safety functions" and "meeting the safety needs of an aging workforce" tied at 18 percent. Lack of funds to implement safety programs was last at 8 percent.
Given the importance of PPE in ensuring worker safety, the survey examined the reasons for such high levels of noncompliance. Of those respondents who observed PPE noncompliance in the workplace, 69 percent said the primary cause was workers thinking that PPE wasn't needed. This was followed by:
• Uncomfortable
• Too hot
• Poor fit
• Not available near work task
• Unattractive looking
The Future of Workplace Safety
What measures have safety managers taken or plan to take in the near future to encourage greater PPE compliance? The top strategies were: improving existing education and training programs (61 percent) and increased monitoring of employees (48 percent). These were followed by:
• Purchasing more comfortable PPE
• Tying compliance to individual performance evaluations
• Purchasing more stylish PPE
• Developing incentive programs
Most Challenging PPE
When it comes to compliance with PPE protocols, eye protection was found to be the "most challenging" PPE category, according to 24 percent of respondents. This was a disturbing though not unexpected finding considering that nearly three out of five workers who experienced eye injuries were found not to be wearing eye protection at the time of the accident or were wearing the wrong kind of eye protection for the job.1Add to this the fact that that thousands of workers are blinded each year from work-related eye injuries that could have been prevented2 and the magnitude of the problem becomes clear.
