Q&A: Preventing Hand Injuries at Your Facility

 

Brenda Nader serves as senior product supply manager at Kimberly-Clark Professional, located in Roswell, GA, which is a leading provider of hygiene, safety and productivity solutions. As a safety company, manufacturing companies rely on KCP for safety products that help protect both their employees and the environments they work in. Brenda brings more than 20 years of leadership in environmental, health and safety management, with particular expertise in cross-functional team building, safety management, organizational effectiveness, and lean manufacturing. She is responsible for helping to drive the continuous improvement efforts of the company’s North America mills. 

 

 

A: While protecting the overall health and well-being of employees should be an employer’s paramount concern, special attention must be paid to preventing hand and finger injuries, which are second only to back strains and sprains in lost work days, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Some studies show that nearly 20 percent of workplace injuries involve cuts and lacerations to the hand and fingers.

 

Not only are there an estimated 110,000 lost time hand injuries annually, but hand injuries send more than one million workers to the emergency room each year. In addition to the physical harm that hand injuries pose to workers, they also have financial implications. The average hand injury claim has now exceeded $6,000, with each lost time workers compensation claim reaching nearly $7,500, according to the BLS and the National Safety Council.

 

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