6 New Uses For High Visibility Vests

June 18, 2018 No Comments

Those bright yellow and orange high visibility vests aren’t just for roadway construction crews any more.  I’m seeing them worn all over the place in business and industry these days.  Employers have discovered that in certain high hazard work areas, it’s a good idea to have employees wear high visibility vests to provide an extra measure of protection. 

Below is a listing of six situations that I feel require the wearing of  high visibility vests:

• All new production employees should be required to wear safety vests.  I successfully implemented such a policy at two different companies.  We required new employees to wear the safety vests during the first 30 calendar days that they worked for the company.   Management did not have to enforce this policy, because the experienced employees came to believe in the policy so strongly that they enforced the rule themselves!
• Certain handicapped or disabled production employees should be required to wear safety vests.   At one company I worked for we had  some factory employees who were deaf.  The area where they worked was extremely dangerous.  If  an imminent danger were to occur, the deaf workers could not hear the warning shout, the alarm, or the horn.  We required the deaf employees to wear high visibility vests.  The other workers would watch out for the vest wearing deaf workers and give them an extra wide berth when working near them. 
• All employees who work in areas where there are inside powered industrial vehicles should be required to wear safety vests.  One company I worked for had a factory in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.  Here, the provincial safety regulations require that employees who work in a warehouse (or in any area where fork trucks operate) wear a high visibility vest. 
• All employees who work outside the building in an area where moving vehicles are present should be required to wear safety vests.  This would apply to: grocery store shopping cart retrievers, parking attendants, car dealership sales-persons, airport curbside attendants, and yard workers who load trucks or move outside  inventory.
• All plant visitors should be required to wear safety vests.   This would include: accountants doing inventory, customers, contractors, office employees who travel through production areas, and vendors (even the guy who fills the pop machine).
• Accident repeaters should be required to wear safety vests.  First, you need to define who is an accident repeater.  For example, anyone with two or more recordable injury accidents in the preceding 24 month period.  The repeater should wear the vest until their record improves to the point where they no longer qualify as an accident repeater.

 

Safety Articles