Driving PPE compliance in warehousing

While ensuring the right health and safety equipment is supplied is a legal requirement for all businesses, pressures forcing companies to evaluate spend has led to a culture of procuring PPE and workwear that simply meets the minimum requirements.

This can negatively affect businesses by causing a lack of PPE and workwear compliance from workers who feel that the garment, by only meeting minimum requirements, does not offer user comfort. This will increase a business’s risk to workplace accidents.

It is important businesses understand the impact incorrect or inadequate PPE and workwear may have on the total number of accidents reported.

In many cases, this comes down to training and the understanding of where the responsibility lies within the business to oversee that sufficient PPE and workwear is available and equally, whether workers are complying to their necessary terms of use. Different businesses adhere to different methods. Some look to health and safety officers to deploy training, whereas others may look to the manufacturer or distributor of PPE and workwear to address best and proper use. Either way, it has to be centrally controlled through the management of a business to make sure training is completed thoroughly and on a regular basis.

There are a number of reasons why training needs to be enforced regularly. Within the warehousing sector, there is often a high turnover of staff which can lead to a growing disparity between employees of who have been educated on what, how recently and what gaps there are in their understanding.

In the absence of regular training, warehousing businesses are exposing themselves to two very common problems; complacency and malpractice. Some workers can become complacent to workplace surroundings – strangely, this may be caused by the presence of a ‘Days Since Last Accident’ sign which details the last recorded accident that may have been some time ago, or simply someone has worked within the environment for many years and feels they are less at risk because they know the surroundings. Frequently, this complacency leads to malpractice and the incorrect use of PPE and workwear.

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Malpractice can cover a whole host of failures within a warehousing environment but often, employees have taken it upon themselves not to wear the protective garments and equipment that have been supplied. This may be because a worker feels that a garment is too cumbersome, for example, and they believe, in their own opinion, that it affects their ability to complete the job at hand efficiently. A common malpractice highlighting this is when workers appear on site with the correct safety footwear in hand, but then fail to change out of their trainers once they have entered the warehouse.

Malpractice may also be resultant of workers choosing to use their own equipment instead of those that have been provided. For example, favouring their own ear protectors. While it may seem that they are abiding to health and safety regulations, the danger is that they could be reducing sound to below 75dB at the ear – this will prevent the wearer from hearing communications and important warning signals and therefore contribute to added accident risk.

As well as training focused on the correct use of PPE, there are wider considerations that must be factored in order to ensure compliance is noted. Regular review of PPE and workwear supplies is essential and this is where employees have a responsibility to work with management and inform them of their needs.

Aged, damaged or worn garments or products pose just as much of a risk as incorrect or ill-fitting PPE and workwear, and they can quickly become ineffective. For example, hi-vis jackets that are excessively dirty lose their reflective components and make workers less visible. In this instance, it must be clear who is responsible for laundering the garment, and a record kept of when this was last completed.

In order to establish a safe and fully compliant workforce within the warehousing sector, it is important that no one-size-fits-all approach is adopted. Greater consultation with the workforce will ensure greater compliance, especially if the individual needs of varying job roles are considered – for example, working temperatures, light conditions, whether working inside or outside – the list goes on.