Gloves at work fall within The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations category, which is something employers must abide by. In this blog, we’ll be looking at the suitability of gloves, not the actual provision of them.
Suitability of Gloves
The gloves need to be suitable for the job. It’s no good having gloves to protect you from handling chemicals or hot liquids if they are porous, allowing liquid to seep through and still injure your hands. If we take the example of sharp objects, the gloves need to actually resist the slice of something sharp instead of it just cutting through.
When it comes to the size and cover of the gloves, they need to do the job and protect all of the areas they are intended for. It’s no good having short gloves where a hot liquid could spill over and go down the sides of the gloves and on to the hands. Perhaps the gloves need to go all the way to the elbow to stop this from happening.
What if gloves are not suitable and I’m injured?
If the gloves fail to adequately protect you, there may be a claim for personal injury compensation to make. Your employer should have insurance to cover you for work injuries like this, and all we need to do is claim from the insurance for the injury, inconvenience caused, and any losses or expenses.
The insurers cannot argue that the gloves are adequate if they were not. The injury itself should be testament of this. If you used the gloves correctly and were instructed to use the gloves for this task, then the employer can be liable.
Can I claim?
Best thing to do is call our free claims helpline on 0800 634 75 75 for free and friendly helpful advice. We can normally tell you in minutes whether you have a claim or not, and if you want to get a claim started right away, we can take your authorisation and get it all started straight away for you.