According to a Liberty Mutual study, almost 70% of hand injuries occur as a result of people not wearing gloves when they should.
Hands are sliced, broken, and bruised due to a lack of suitable work safety gloves. The skin is ripped away, and fingers are lost. Men and women alike must suffer months, if not years, of torturous recuperation with no certainty that their hands will ever be completely restored.
Everyone suffers when hand injuries occur. Team morale suffers as a result of increased expenditures associated with worker’s compensation, safety fines, missed time, and turnover.
Choosing a glove may seem insignificant, but if the work you do puts your hands in risk, this “insignificant decision” will have a significant influence. I assure you.
To protect the hands of your employees, you must use the correct glove. As I describe it, the proper glove is one that meets the very minimum standards and is comfortable to wear.
To determine whether gloves are appropriate for your business, follow these four steps:
- Conduct a risk assessment
- Determine the requirements for each type of glove, according to the task
- Request samples and conduct trials
- Assemble the data and complete the purchase
Let’s go down each of these processes so you can verify that your employees are wearing the proper gloves—gloves that will prevent injuries and save hands.
#1: Conduct a risk assessment
To determine whether gloves are appropriate for your business, you must first understand the hazards and risks that your employees experience. To this aim, do a hazard assessment for each work or, better yet, conduct an evaluation in collaboration with a recognised glove manufacturer. They’re almost certainly going to do it for free.
A hazard assessment is crucial since workers are not always aware of potential threats. Indeed, according to Matthew Hallowell, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, workers are generally unaware of approximately 45 percent of the threats they encounter.
With a hazard assessment, your objective is to identify more dangers than they do. Your objective is to identify as many concealed threats as possible before to their occurrence. Not after they have occurred.
#2: Determine the Glove Requirements for Each Task
Determine the requirements for each type of glove, according to the task. I do not imply only government norms when I use the term “requirements.” That is, fully comprehending what is truly required in terms of protection, grip, dexterity, and comfort—for that specific work. This requires in-depth research and interviews with employees.
Gloves should satisfy the criteria, not surpass them. As with Goldilocks, “just right” is perfectly acceptable. If you discover that you require a cut level A2, for example, do not even consider testing a cut level A5—it will be too bulky. Gloves must not be excessively large, expensive, or overdesigned for the job, or they will not be used.
As you compile your list of requirements, you may discover that your facility requires ten or more distinct types of gloves. It is significantly more prudent—and safer—to obtain gloves that are task-specific, rather than attempting to locate a one-size-fits-all glove, which is frequently unavailable or will be too cumbersome to use. As a general rule, one work requires only one sort of glove.
#3: Request Samples and Conduct Trials
Solicit multiple glove samples from a glove maker for each duty that requires a different type of glove. If each sample matches your specifications, you will only require two or three glove variations in addition to the incumbent glove. If you attempt to run a trial with more alternatives than that, the logistics will almost certainly be a nightmare, and the feedback will almost certainly be confusing.
After obtaining the samples, conduct trials using a representative sample of actual workers executing the actual duties. Allow various workers to wear the gloves for approximately a week. Allow no one employee, supervisor, or buying manager to make this decision.
These trials are critical because without gloves, there is no protection. According to a Liberty Mutual research, almost 70% of hand injuries occur as a result of people not wearing gloves when they should have. Frequently, they were not wearing their gloves because they were actually unable to perform their jobs while wearing them.
By conducting trials, you can guarantee that the gloves you select are both functional and comfortable enough for your employees to wear.
#4: Compile the Information and Make the Purchase
Finally, once the trials are complete, compile the data, compare prices, and bargain for volume discounts on your purchase.
Bear in mind that you will most likely require numerous glove kinds for various jobs. My company manufactures nearly 1,000 different styles of work gloves since that is the number required to meet all of our clients’ work and safety requirements, as well as the various levels of comfort and style required to accomplish that apparently simple mandate.
THE IMPACT OF WEARING THE APPROPRIATE GLOVES
With the appropriate gloves for each task, you can relax knowing that your employees are protected. Workplace injuries will decrease, while worker morale will improve. Workers will be able to carry out their responsibilities safely and efficiently.
Proper gloves can help you save a finger, a worker, a schedule, a client, a year, and a company.