NSCA Foundation

Four construction companies build hand safety awareness

Tuesday, 12 May, 2020

Four construction companies build hand safety awareness

Construction remains a ‘hands on’ industry, and therefore, one in which hand safety continues to be a key safety issue. These injuries can be costly to companies in terms of time and productivity, and more importantly, can have devastating, lasting impacts for workers. In light of hand and finger injuries remaining high, and to raise help awareness of the importance of advocating for hand safety and the role of personal protective equipment (PPE) within this at-risk sector, the Office of the Federal Safety Commissioner enlisted four construction companies to take part in a hand protection program. These companies — Lipman Pty Ltd, Cooper & Oxley Builders, Sitzler Pty Ltd and Sarah Constructions Pty Ltd — had reviewed their internal injury data, which confirmed that a high proportion of reported injuries related to hands and fingers.

The program involved addressing the prevalence of hand injuries through a range of targeted hand safety awareness initiatives, which sought to both raise awareness of basic hand safety within the individual company’s workforce and to combat complacency. This was achieved largely through the production and promotion of posters, and through hand PPE promotion. To this end, Sarah Constructions distributed a poster titled ‘Five steps to hand safety’ across all its sites. The poster includes key statistics on the number of hand injuries sustained within the company workforce as well as some key steps to follow to mitigate the risks. A follow-up poster was also developed that focused on personal protective equipment (PPE) and the types of gloves that should be used. Lipman’s initiative had the title ‘Take 5 to keep 5’ and revolved around training presentations and site posters with five simple hand safety steps.

Sitzler adopted a shock value approach, depicting graphic hand injuries in its posters. Toolbox talks ran alongside the posters to allow discussion of hand injury statistics and causational factor, and advice on how to assess hand-related risks connected with particular work tasks. Cooper & Oxley Builders emphasised the importance to PPE adoption by trialling a mandatory glove program at its Shenton House construction site that ran over a two-week period. The company also invited a safety glove consultant to survey the workers about their experience wearing the gloves as they completed various work tasks. Sitzler also consulted a range of trade groups on the introduction of a mandatory glove policy and implemented safe work observations that allowed for the monitoring of work tasks conducted with and without the use of gloves. Lipman also issued gloves and glove clips to all workers, while Sarah Constructions made various glove types available to its workers and subcontractors in the lead-up to distributing its ‘Hand protection selection guide’ poster.

All four companies that took part in the hand safety initiative reported a number of positive outcomes. This included: a statistical reduction in incidences of hand injury; increased awareness of the major causes of hand injuries among their workforces; worker engagement in the development of PPE policies; increased adoption of work glove use and discussion of hand safety issues; and an overall cultural change. A key takeaway of the initiative was the value of continuing the awareness poster campaign as a fixture in on-site amenities and of making hand safety a recurring agenda item at toolbox talks across the companies.

National Safety

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Syda Productions

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