Hard Hat Awareness Week was introduced to drive awareness of brain injuries through activities designed to encourage best practice around hard hats and various other safety equipment.
The impact of a brain injury can be life-changing for both the injured person but also their wider family and friends. Wearing a hard hat, maintaining and storing it appropriately, whilst being more concussion and head injury aware are all vital to keeping hard hat wearers safe. We want to remind people about the importance of wearing hard hats and taking any impact on the head seriously. Even a minor brain injury can have a major impact. So take time to stop work, report the incident and recover fully before returning to work.
Most head injuries are not even reported and unfortunately, there is a lot of confusion around RIDDOR. Reported incidents of head injuries are often mis-reported, as are other incidents, and can also be categorised into asphyxia. This does not give us a clear understanding of the head injuries that are occurring within the Industry. HHAW would like to see a full body diagram in the RIDDOR report that enables reporters to clearly mark the area of injury as well as a description. What is also very important to know is, was the person injured was wearing a hard hat at the time they received the head injury?. This information is currently not reported.
Reporting the incident exactly how it happened is key to providing statistical information. This information will enable manufacturers and standard makers to increase the protection level in hard hats to help protect against these incidents.
HHAW want wearers to be safe and comfortable at all times. By participating, you will help drive awareness across all industries and help us take a step forward in keeping people safe.