Picking the right PPE for your workplace can be a difficult task if you are not familiar with health and safety practices. However, ensuring that your safety equipment is sufficient for your work environment is essential to keep your staff safe while working. In this article, we will talk you through our guide to choosing the right PPE for your business. So, get ready to take notes to make your place of work safer for your employees.
Assess Your Environment
Before deciding on what PPE is required in your workplace you need to complete a risk assessment of your environment. This is regarded as one of the most important steps in identifying what PPE your workforce will need to complete their daily tasks. During the process, you will need to be open-minded but also realistic, so you understand each hazard faced in your working environment.
When completing your risk assessment, it is recommended that you do this collaboratively. Having a fresh pair of eyes in your workplace may lead to the identification of risks that you may have missed. So, using an external contributor such as a health and safety professional can help you with the process of risk assessing your facilities. Once you have assessed your environment, you will be aware of all of the potential risks present on your site. After this, you will then be able to move onto ensuring that your PPE matches with hazards in your environment.
Ensure That Your PPE Matches Your Hazards
HSE recommend that you should only use PPE as a last resort, so you must first decide whether PPE will provide you with the right solution in minimising hazards. When it comes to protection against hazards, PPE should not be used alone. PPE used along with the right safety controls and equipment in place such as guards and sound manufacturing practices will be much more effective in eliminating hazards.
Once you have identified your hazards and you have decided that PPE is required in order to reduce the risk for your staff, you should look at matching your PPE to your hazards. For example, protective clothing such as gloves or goggles is suitable when working with chemicals. Once you have matched your personal protective equipment with associated hazards, you must then make sure that protective equipment is readily supplied for your employees to use.
As we are currently going through the pandemic of Covid-19, many businesses have introduced specific PPE to combat Coronavirus at work. It is currently essential to provide your workers with disposable gloves and disposable face masks during this period so they can feel comfortable and safe while at work.
Make Sure Employees Use PPE Properly
Supplying PPE to your staff is not enough to ensure that accidents are reduced and at a minimum in your work environment. If you have made relevant personal protective equipment available to your employees, it is essential that they have been trained to use the items properly. Within PPE training your workers should be made aware of when PPE is required and how it should be worn. Before doing this, you should test the equipment to ensure that it is sufficient for the tasks completed on your site.
Training for PPE use must also cover the limitations of your equipment, maintenance and the disposal of your protective products. This is crucial as your employees will then know all of the essential details of the PPE they will be using. Your staff will, therefore, be further encouraged to use PPE properly to reduce the risks from hazards within your workplace.
Maintain The Compliance of PPE
The final step that employers must enforce is maintaining the compliance of PPE. This is even more significant if there are developments in work tasks, a change in PPE or if you have found that your staff are incorrectly using protective products. If any of these issues arise, we strongly recommend that you retrain your workers in the PPE that they are using. You can achieve this through either physical audits or by paper or digitally with a questionnaire. It is good practice to complete PPE audits annually, so you can review whether your equipment is suitable for your hazards and you can also assess whether your employees are still using the products properly.
You can now be certain that you are picking the right PPE for your place of work, by following this guide. If you are looking to purchase PPE products, we stock a wide range of disposable aprons and overalls suitable for a variety of working professions.
