Investing in better protective equipment and other gear for your construction workers can help them stay safe. Gear manufacturers and distributors are also making concentrated efforts to make these items safer.
That said, there’s a standing question of which is more important: better gear or a better workplace safety culture?
The Protective Power of Better Gear
There’s no question that better gear can have a positive impact on workplace safety. In an environment with potential chemical hazards, it’s much better to wear safety goggles than to not wear them. However, some types of safety goggles are better than others, offering more physical protection, more chemical resilience, and other factors.
There are many characteristics to enter the equation that determines the overall effectiveness of gear. Materials, technologies, design, and implementation all matter. There are certainly bare minimums for protective equipment if you want it to be capable of mitigating hazards, but if you want to maximize safety, you should be interested in the best equipment you can afford.
Of course, there are some limitations on how much protection better gear can provide. It’s not a perfect solution, and there aren’t many pieces of protective equipment that can provide perfect protection.
Why Culture Takes Precedent
Generally, workplace culture takes precedence over better gear.
- Hazard identification and elimination. Protective gear isn’t necessary unless you’ve already failed to eliminate or control the hazard in question. Safety culture allows you to prioritize identifying and eliminating hazards, so they can’t possibly impact anyone. For example, safety systems can reduce the risk of a fall, but it’s even better to avoid working at a great height to begin with. The more you can eliminate and mitigate hazards on the job-site, the better, regardless of what equipment you use.
- Gear use. You may have some of the latest and greatest protective equipment on your construction job-site, but it’s not going to do much good unless people actually use it. Without a strong safety culture, employees may brush off the need for safety equipment or use it inconsistently. In other words, safety culture is kind of a prerequisite to getting the full value out of better safety gear.
- Correct use. PPE is only effective when used properly. If someone wears a helmet that isn’t the proper size, or if they don’t properly secure a piece of equipment to their body, it’s not going to provide a sufficient level of protection. Safety culture encourages education, training, and practice so that employees know exactly how to use their safety equipment properly. It’s another demonstration that safety culture is absolutely necessary for making your protective equipment work.
- Job-site behavior. Safety culture also dictates job-site behavior, which can render the value of protective equipment useless under certain circumstances. For example, if your employees recklessly disregard hazards by horsing around on the job-site, even the best protective equipment isn’t going to keep them safe.
- The limits of gear protection. There are also certain hazards and situations where protective equipment is practically useless. For example, if a forklift accident causes hundreds of pounds of goods to fall on top of someone’s head, a hardhat isn’t going to be enough to prevent (or even mitigate) the damage.
- Harm mitigation and intervention. Safety culture isn’t just about preventing harm; it’s also about mitigating that harm and intervening whenever necessary. If there’s an unexpectedly dangerous situation, employees may not have time to grab the right safety equipment – assuming there’s applicable safety equipment available in the first place. Instead, safety culture is what will compel your employees to take action.
- Vigilance and reporting. It’s also important for your employees to be motivated to report accidents when they do occur. Reporting accidents is critical for a multitude of reasons. It’s a way of collecting and recording pertinent information for insurance purposes, for legal reasons, and for improving your own safety in the future. It’s also vital for ensuring accurate accountability. With better safety culture, people will be more vigilant – and more likely to follow proper procedures where necessary.
- Cultural pressure. Safety culture introduces a kind of positive version of peer pressure. When everyone in your organization is committed to safety, everyone takes on a leadership role in preserving and enhancing job-site safety. This mutually inducing pressure to prioritize safety is invaluable – and arguably more important than the one-dimensional role that protective gear plays.
Your Business Needs Both
The bottom line here is that while protective gear is effective and important, its importance is secondary to the importance of safety culture. That said, safety culture can’t do all the heavy lifting by itself. Your organization needs the strong foundation of a solid safety culture as well as the best protective gear you can afford.
