Millions of workers each year are hurt on the job from hand-related injuries. So many of these injuries are caused by workers either removing their safety gloves or just not wearing them at all.

If you want your workers to wear or keep their gloves on, there are two factors to take in mind and how you can help solve them.

If you want your workers to wear gloves and reduce the risk of injury, you should pay attention to the two most often overlooked factors: the hassle factor and the not comfortable factor.

Reduce The Hassle Factor

When gloves become in any way inconvenient to access, employees will more often than not choose to work without them. Instead of relying on workers to go out of their way to find work gloves, consider eliminating the need to find them all together.  Here are some ways to achieve this:

  • Placing boxes of gloves in an easily accessible area closer to the work site.
  • Labelling specialized gloves by task, so workers can choose the correct gloves for the tasks at hand.
  • Provide clips for workers to hang their gloves from their belts for easy access.

The Uncomfortable Factor

If the safety gloves are not comfortable, your employees will not wear them! If you see your workers taking their gloves off to perform tasks, it’s important to understand why. Ask them questions such as:

    • Are they too hot wearing them?
    • Are the gloves too bulky making it harder to perform their task?
    • Are they the incorrect size? Maybe you need to order more of a variety of sizes.

Often, employees don’t even realize their actions—removing their gloves can be an automatic response to wearing uncomfortable gloves. Consider testing types and sizes of gloves with your workers before buying them in bulk. Make sure they are climate appropriate.  Let them know if their gloves are washable and if not how to clean them up.

If gloves aren’t worn, they will not protect your workers! When supplying gloves, you want to ensure the gloves offer good protection for the job at hand, but it’s just as important that the gloves are easy to access and comfortable to wear. If your workers aren’t wearing their gloves have a talk with them as to why and how you as the safety manager can fix that.