Safety Knights

I have asked them to put on their safety glasses. if I come down the next day and see they don't have them on, I ask them again and then tell their supervisor. I also tell both that if they can't follow the rules then they aren't allowed on site. Usually the supervisor will talk to their employee and set everything straight. I have told people to go home because they aren't following the rules. You should have the power to do that because if they get hurt, your employer will likely take some of the responsibility especially if you are considered the supervising facility and are telling them what to do on site.

I have found this in the past, and have had various responses. And have heard all the excuses from my dog ate it, to Owning it. While owning it is great and hopefully a teachable moment but it runs deeper in culture. root causes and deep dives have to be looked at to find out why. If their leads or supervisors aren't saying anything and they see them a heck of a lot more than the safety person walking around, then that could be the place to start with finding out from them why they aren't saying something? repeated behaviors are no longer mistakes they are choices. May be time to PPE is an initial during orientation ??? Might be time to train on it again. Reminders for everyone and conversations with leaders and management.

Accountability for safety starts at the top of any organization. If your company leadership thought it was important that folks wear their PPE, then that would be conveyed to management, if management thought it was important, then that would be conveyed to foremen and supervisors, if foremen and supervisors thought it was important then it would be conveyed to employees and contractors.

Usually when folks won't wear PPE it's because they're not being held accountable if they don't. If supervisor turn a blind eye to it, then employees take that as permission to continue. If managers turn a blind eye to supervisors not holding their staff accountable, then supervisors take that as permission to continue. If leadership turns a blind eye to managers not holding supervisors accountable, then they take it as permission to continue.

If you don't have the support of your organization in keeping employees safe or holding them accountable, then it makes your job very difficult. The long term change that you seek requires investment by your company. One way to do is to present your case to leadership/management/whoever makes sense at your organization. Present the "why", present the problem, present the solution, and present the goal.

For employees I will ask them where is there PPE. They'll make up a weak excuse and then put it on. If it happens again I'll have their Supervisor do the same. If it continues we write a safety violation which will hurt their end of year bonus and raise amounts.

At my site, we had an issue where no one was wearing their safety glasses while packing. Literally no one. So the safety team asked us (the managers) to survey our teams about why they weren't wearing them. Surprisingly, the top reason was that people said the glasses were digging into their temples. So we shopped around for a different brand and did a test group with some of the workers to see which ones were the most comfortable. It was a long process and of course we still had to enforce people wearing them, but it definitely felt like a more inclusive, long-term solution. Writing people up for PPE violations was such a frustrating, repetitive task.

When we have a contractor whose employees choose to not wear or properly wear PPE or they commit unsafe acts, we ask them to leave the job and not return.