There are many ways to manage the technical, physical and human factors that impact on-the-job hand safety. From job hazard analyses and sourcing better gloves to reviewing incidents and training supervisors to do more safety work, safety folks have plenty of tools available in their toolkits.

In a recent survey conducted by SafeStart, with the help of EHS Today, over 500 professionals with safety duties—a mix of managers, supervisors, directors and others who are responsible for training, procurement, compliance and more—explained their approach to hand safety.

Three interventions stood out in terms of popularity when it comes to protecting workers’ hands. These are the activities that safety folks have most focused their time and attention on. They are:

• Developing a culture that influences PPE compliance for hand safety
• Conducting audits/walkthroughs/observations
• Conducting training on PPE requirements, use, care

Over a quarter of respondents said they conducted audits, walkthroughs, and/or observations on a daily basis, and the same number said they did so on a weekly basis. Fewer than 3% said they never performed these activities. It all adds up to over half of the survey participants saying they spent a significant amount of time or more on audits, walkthroughs and/or observations.

Survey participants also spend their time trying to develop a safety culture and influence PPE compliance with the frequent use of toolbox talks and one-on-one conversations. Over half of respondents said they carried out these activities on a daily or weekly basis, and only 10% and 7.5%, respectively, said they never did them.

On one hand, these are examples of safety professionals walking the talk—they’ve said that hand safety is important, and now they’re lacing up their boots and spending time on the floor. They’re talking about hand safety in small groups and individual conversations. Their time is precious and they’re spending it monitoring hand safety. That’s commitment.

On the other hand, these measures are not as effective as anyone would like.

Something else needs to be done.

The hand safety beliefs of safety professionals 

When it comes to what safety professionals think about hand safety, it’s no surprise to see that many of their beliefs overlap with their actions.

For example, in the SafeStart survey, respondents ranked audits, walkthroughs and/or observations as the most effective activity or method to reduce hand injuries. And as we’ve already seen, safety professionals spend a significant amount of their time doing exactly that. One of the big challenges for safety professionals is filling the need for observations without spending all of their time on it. And understandably, many variables determine the efficacy of every well-intentioned observational activity.

Respondents also believe that toolbox talks and one-on-one conversations are important and both happen with regularity. Similarly, training was listed as a particularly effective activity, and almost 97% of survey participants say that they conduct training at least once a year, with over half of them conducting it once a month or more.

There’s one area where beliefs and actions don’t line up, however. Respondents believe that reducing distractions is on par with refresher training for its value in preventing hand injuries. Meanwhile, 21% of folks said they never—yes, never—take active steps to reduce distractions. Even though there was strong agreement that the “chances of line-of-fire hand injuries would be lower if workers were focused on the hazards in relation to their hands.”

While we’re talking about human factors like distraction, safety folks quite rightly believe that complacency and rushing/multitasking can have a notable impact on safety, with over a third of respondents saying they have a significant effect on glove use. Roughly 75% agreed that these factors have a moderate or greater impact on safety outcomes.

In fact, the survey revealed that safety professionals believe human factors are three of the six biggest influences on workers not wearing required protective gloves.

If we want to answer the question of why walkthroughs, toolbox talks and other interventions aren’t having a more positive effect on hand safety, there’s a single glaring answer—they aren’t accounting for human factors.

Distraction and line of fire affect hand safety

The survey also presented safety professionals with a series of statements about hand injuries. Among the statements they most agreed with was: “Chances of line-of-fire hand injuries would be lower if workers were focused on the hazards in relation to their hands.” Clearly, EHS folks believe there is a close connection between distraction and line of fire. (The only statement that received a more positive response was about the incident-mitigating effects of culture—a topic we explore in our new safety guide: Show of Hands: Insights and Strategies to Prevent Hand Injuries.)

It makes intuitive sense that distraction and line of fire go hand in hand. Paying attention to one’s body position, and to what’s going on in the surrounding environment, is one of the best ways to stay out of the line of fire. (It’s also the only universal solution, as no matter what task someone is doing, awareness will drastically influence risk.)

This belief is backed up by research. A study called “The Distracted Worker: Effect on Hazard Recognition and Safety Performance” found that: “distracted workers recognized a smaller proportion of hazards than the undistracted.” These results are as important as they are unsurprising.

We’ve already seen that safety professionals are strong proponents of the need to reduce distractions in the workplace. We’ve also seen that their actions lag somewhat in that regard. But what if one of the solutions isn’t just about reducing distraction—what if it also requires us to reframe the problem?

It’s important to eliminate distractions as best you can, and it’s also impossible to eliminate all of them. Even if you could, the human brain has a tendency to wander in and out of focus. In the same way that people can trip over their own feet even when there are no other obstacles in sight, our minds can drift away from the task at hand even when there’s no external source of distraction.

At some point, you may need to shift your efforts away from reducing the causes of distraction, towards improving the attention of workers who are the subject of distraction. There is a two-part formula about attention and safety that is as straightforward as it is true:

• When safety awareness is up, distractions are less likely to lead to line-of-fire risks.
• When safety awareness is down, it’s easier to become distracted and the risk of line-of-fire incidents increases.

An attention-oriented approach can reduce hand injuries. It can also cut down on all sorts of other incidents too. Attention and distraction are two sides of the same coin, and this is why training programs that center on human factors in the workplace like fatigue and distraction can be so effective at mitigating hand injuries caused by distraction and line of fire. Because they can help protect workers from both external distractions and internal mental lapses.

This blog post is an adapted excerpt from the safety guide Show of Hands: Insights and Strategies to Prevent Hand Injuries, which examines robust research and survey data on the most effective ways to reduce hand injuries. Read the guide today for more research, insights and essential hand safety pointers for your workplace.