Most employers spend vast sums of money on high-quality protective gear like helmets for head safety and working boots for foot and slip protection. However, many fail to provide their teams with adequate training on how to fully benefit from personal protective equipment.
Ticking the compliance checklist isn’t enough. To ensure your workforce is safe, you must start by educating your team on why protective equipment matters, how to use it, and how to care for it. This reduces risk, boosts productivity, and ensures you don’t run afoul of OHS regulations.
Why is Proper Training Essential for Safe Use of Protective Gear?
Why Training Matters?
Personal protective equipment (PPE) safeguards workers from hazards such as electric shock, slips on the factory floor, and falls on the construction site. However, even the best equipment is only as effective as the person using it.
One of the main reasons you still see workplace accidents today isn’t due to a lack of PPE but misuse and poor maintenance. For example, if you wear a respirator incorrectly, it won’t help you much against dust and fumes. Also, wet, greasy, or ill-fitting gloves can cause workers to drop or mishandle tools, leading to serious injuries.
Besides preventing injuries, training is also required by UK law. As a business owner, it’s your duty to ensure your employees not only have the proper safety gear but also adequate training.
When procuring new protective gear, set aside a budget for training your employees to use and care for it. In addition to preventing injuries, it will also improve morale and contribute to a more productive workplace.
Establish Clear Training Goals
A good training session should have clear aims and cover all aspects of PPE. At the end of the training, employees should understand the benefits of the gear and how to use and maintain it properly. You can run the training in-house or hire a PPE specialist.
Generally, the training should cover:
Understanding Risk
At the end of the training, employees should know which hazards are present in their specific roles and how protective equipment can help them. This will motivate them to wear the gear at all times, helping prevent accidents caused by negligence.
Correct Use
After it’s all said and done, safety and compliance equipment is only as good as how you use it. Make sure your employees know how to correctly put on, adjust and safely remove each type of safety gear.
Fit and Comfort
Many employees who fail to wear their PPE at work do so because it’s uncomfortable. While the number one consideration should still be its ability to protect workers, do not disregard comfort.
Encourage employees to promptly report ill-fitting PPE and request adjustments or replacements. You should also let employees know that some PPE, such as work boots, may take a few days to break in and provide tips on how to do so comfortably.
Care & Maintenance
PPEs are subject to wear and tear every time they are used. They also easily get dirty depending on the workplace, and can be exposed to environments that subject them to early damage.
Start by explaining to your employees the importance of cleaning and carefully storing PPE to ensure it stays effective for a long time. The gear should also be carefully inspected before each use for maximum safety.
Keep in mind that your approach should suit your specific workplace. If you work in construction, your team will have different PPE and training needs from a warehouse or engineering team.
You should also aim for more interactive training. You can still hand out memos and PDFs, but passive learning rarely sticks. Conduct practice drills, show live demonstrations, and present real-world situations where teams decide what PPE to use.
