If you want to get attention about hand safety, try showing a project crew what happens to a naked human hand when a knife slices through the palm, or a 4x4 comes crashing down on the bony back of the hand. Then do the same thing with a safety glove slipped over the hand and compare the damage. Of course, the hand shouldn’t be attached to a living human. To make a lasting impression, you’ll need a silicone version made with wooden bones and fake blood that can bleed out.
That’s what one safety consultant has done in live demonstrations for employees at a couple of big energy companies. “Most safety training is so boring,” notes Matthew R. Hallowell, executive director of Boulder, Colo.-based Safety Function LLC, which conducted the demonstrations along with colleagues from his consulting company and the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is an endowed professor of construction engineering.