Safer Together has partnered with Helping Hands to develop the Helping Hands – Hand and Finger Preservation Program. The centrepiece of the program is an innovative exercise in which participants immobilise their dominant hand. They then work in a small team to build a prosthetic hand. Helping Hands take the prosthetic hands that are built during the exercise and distribute them to amputee landmine victims throughout the developing world.
Hand and finger injuries are currently the most frequent injury type occurring on a wellsite. 72 serious injury claims relating to hand and finger injuries were made in the period 2012-2015 for the CSG Drilling and Completions industry. This was 27% of all serious injury claims in this period.
The high incidence of hand injuries is not just confined to Drilling and Completions. In 2016, 40 of the 88 recordable injuries (45%) across our entire Industry involved hands, fingers and thumbs.
In addition to the hand-building exercise, a series of toolbox talks have been prepared to bring hand safety messages to the workforce in an engaging way. These toolbox talks use short videos (30 – 90 seconds long) of workers doing what they do – working with their hands in everyday situations. These videos are used in a facilitated discussion where simple questions are posed:
- What is happening here?
- How could you hurt your hands?
- How would you protect your hands?
The toolbox talk materials include a library of video clips that have been recorded at worksites in the Drilling and Completions sector. Workers will be encouraged to film their everyday work activities, and to upload short clips to our library. By doing this, it is hoped that content will be ‘crowd sourced’ our content. This will mean that the workers are using materials that they have built for themselves.
We have trialled this program at Santos and have seen excellent engagement from field and office based participants. We feel excited and privileged to be working with the team at Helping Hands. With this program the participants spend time reflecting on how their life would be changed without the use of their hand and they also contribute to improving the quality of life of someone in a developing country who has lost the use of their hand. We use Safer Together programs such as Helping Hands and Contain-It to increase safety awareness and continue to build a proactive safety culture with our Drilling and Completion teams. Glenn Watt – GM, Onshore Drilling and Completions – Santos
It's been a real pleasure to work with the Safer Together team on this important project. I believe this program is doing something that has never before been attempted and our whole team are proud to be a part of it. Matt Henricks - Helping Hands
The Safer Together Rig Site Safety Working Group (RSSWG) has prepared a detailed Launch Kit which will help Safer Together members roll-out the Helping Hands - Hand and Finger Safety Preservation Program.
For more information about Helping Hands – Hand and Finger Preservation Program click here.
For more information about Safer Together click here.
For more information about Helping Hands click here.
Contact: [email protected]