PPE Noncompliance: A Serious Threat to Safety and Health PPE

1.    Establish and consistently enforce a policy requiring the use of assigned PPE. Make sure all employees are aware of the rules and the consequences of noncompliance (that is, in addition to the potential for injury or illness).

2.    Talk about PPE when appropriate in safety meetings. Identify hazards and explain how specific PPE is designed to protect against those hazards.

3.    Ask employees to give their personal reasons for wearing PPE—for example, getting home safe and sound to their families, avoiding disability or disfigurement, because it’s the smart thing to do, etc.

4.    Make the analogy with fitness and healthy lifestyle. Employees do many things like exercising, eating right, and getting medical checkups for their health. Why not wear PPE for their health, too?

5.    Ask for employee input concerning PPE. Listen to complaints and reasons for noncompliance.

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6.    Post signs indicating what PPE is needed in each work area.

7.    When you talk about the need for PPE, point out that professional athletes wear PPE. This might appeal to the younger males, who are among the greatest risk-takers in the workplace. Emphasize that they won’t see NFL or hockey players on the field or on the ice without their PPE, and those guys certainly aren’t wimps. Even pro basketball players wear special footwear, and baseball players wear gloves
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8.    Provide statistics and descriptions of accidents that have occurred in your workplace or your industry because workers weren’t wearing required PPE. Some employees will respond to this approach; others may not, thinking it won’t happen to them.

9.    Make sure supervisors monitor PPE use daily among all their employees and don’t overlook any noncompliance on the part of any employee for any reason.

10.  Use progressive discipline on repeat offenders. The carrot is usually better than the stick, but with chronic violators, you’ve got to be prepared to use the stick.

You probably have other strategies you use to encourage PPE compliance. But whichever steps you take, make sure that you’re achieving the goal of 100% compliance. Nothing less is acceptable.

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Ready-Made Checklists

BLR’s Safety Audit Checklists provides safety and health checklists on more than 50 essential workplace topics, including a whole section devoted to all the major PPE.

Each Safety Audit Checklists section contains:

• A review of applicable OSHA standards
• Safety management tips
• Training requirements
• At least one comprehensive safety checklist

Many sections also contain a compliance checklist, which highlights key provisions of OSHA standard. All checklists can be copied and circulated to supervisors and posted for employees.

All told, this best-selling program provides you with more than 300 separate safety checklists keyed to three main criteria:

• OSHA compliance checklists, built right from the government standards in such key areas as HazCom, lockout/tagout, electrical safety, and many more.
• “Plaintiff attorney” checklists, built around those non-OSHA issues that often attract lawsuits.
• Safety management checklists that monitor the administrative procedures you need to have for topics such as OSHA 300 Log maintenance, training program scheduling and recording, and OSHA-required employee notifications. 

Make as many copies as you need for all your supervisors and managers, and distribute. What’s more, the entire program is updated annually. And the cost averages only about $1 per checklist.

If this method of ensuring a safer, more OSHA-compliant workplace interests you, we’ll be happy to make Safety Audit Checklists available for a no-cost, no-obligation, 30-day evaluation in your office. Just let us know, and we’ll be pleased to arrange it.

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