Posted By Paul Darby
I have a great deal of experience in this as I took over safety at a manufacturing plant with 750 employees and a terrible safety record, we were on the HSE poor performers list and the safety culture was - if you spoke up about safety you were sacked.
We introduced full mandatory site safety glasses after a year long trial where I insisted that they must be worn for specific tasks or in specific areas. Everbody was warned at the beginnig that if that approach didn't work it would be mandatory everywhere. They didn't comply, so we went mandatory.
Everybody wore them on day one, and by day 3 nobody was wearing them. It took us 2 years of very hard work for it to eventually become self enforcing by the employees.
I had all of the excuses in the world, that they were magnifying, sending people blind, making them sick etc etc. Some suggstions that may help are, go with a quality manufacturer. We used North Safety who made a good range and gave us great back up. They even flew an optometrist who designs their glasses in Germany over to meet with the real die-hards who said it was sending them blind! Their objections changed a bit when they were sat with the manufacturer and an optometrist. Also a good response to the whingers is "if Boeing can assemble a super high tech aircraft wearing safety glasses, I am sure we can do our daily jobs too"
Forge a link with a good, local, independant optician who you can refer people to at no cost to the employee. It is great power to your elbow to have an independent, qualified view.
If someone says that the glasses are giving them a headache, tell them to stck with it. Their eyes just need to get used to it. The worst thing that they can do is keep taking them off and putting them back on. Their eyes will adjust. Also wearing safety glasses may just show up a weakness in the eye that existed before they wore safety glasses, so they may need prescription glasses.
If an employee says that they have been to their optician and he has confirmed that they are affecting the employees eyesight, my response was always to ask the optician to put it in writing, addressed to the safety glasses manufacturer, that their glasses affect the wearers eyesight.. it always went away!
Have zero tollerance on it, and make sure your managers and supervisors wear them all the time. If they don't comply, the workforce never will. We also had problem that outside normal working hours it often became more lax, but we stopped that by disciplining a manager who was in charge at a weekend, it never happened again.
Also, you will not eliminate eye injuries. Safety glasses will still let dust and fluid around the outside. Safety Glasses are to stop serious or penetrating injury to the eye.
I am really pleased to say that in the 5 years since we implemented mandatory glasses we definitely prevented 3 employees loosing an eye, (One of which was a guy looking up at a colleague working above him, when he dropped a 3 foot long, 1/4 inch steel rod, and it embedded itself in his safety glasses above his retina!!) and scores more from having to go to hospital.
Stick with it and be relentless, it will be worth it. Also it helps re-enforce the general safety culture.