Pictured: some of the Scottish Power Renewables Team
SafetyOn – G+’s sister organisation - provides leadership in health and safety for the onshore wind industry. Since SafetyOn started collecting health and safety incident data in 2020, it has identified that 8% of incidents caused injury to hands, making them the most frequent body part injured in the onshore wind sector.
Hands are exposed to many hazards in the workplace which, in worst case scenarios, can result in serious hand injuries including permanent disability such as hand arm vibration, carpal tunnel syndrome, and amputation. In addition, work-related hand injuries are a major cause of lost time incidents. This trend can be seen across a variety of industries, such as the offshore wind industry, as well as in the construction industry.
Protecting your hands is important for your work and quality of life. SafetyOn recognised that there is already a lot of literature available on hand injuries, however the rate of incidents across the industry had shown no sign of decreasing. As part of its efforts to mitigate hand injuries, SafetyOn collaborated with its members and key industry stakeholders to develop an innovative hand injury video campaign focused on raising awareness of hand injuries, recognising risk, removing hazards, redesigning processes, and saving employees from harm.
Four videos were released as part of the campaign and are freely available to everyone via the SafetyOn website (safetyon.com/work-programme/publications/hand-injury-video-campaign).
The videos are being used as part of toolbox talks, training, and have been embedded into company’s health and safety programme.
The latest SafetyOn incident data report shows a decline in incidents resulting in hand injuries by 2%. In addition, the statistics show an increase in the number of hours worked by around 3% compared with previous years. Despite the increase in hours, the Total Recordable Incident Rate (0,44) and Lost Time Incident Frequency (0,23) are the lowest on record, indicating that industry has been effective at improving safety performance through the release of the hand injury campaign.
The innovative video campaign won IOSH Scotland Campaign of the Year, and Positive Improvement award at the 2023 Scottish Green Energy Awards.
SafetyOn is working on another video campaign focused on mitigating incidents from manual handling – this is a joint project with G+.