by Paul V. Arnold

Style is an important part of a plant safety program. If a worker doesn’t like the way he or she looks while wearing a given piece of personal protective equipment, the chances are good that person will modify the product, wear it in an improper manner or not use it at all.

Take hard hats. How many workers in your plant have spray-painted their hard hat? How many wear it backward? How many leave it in their locker or car?

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration handed out 1,328 citations last year for violations to head protection standards 1910.135 and 1926.100. These citations, for violations like the ones listed in the previous paragraph, cost employers more than $875,000 in fines.

Getting workers to wear a hard hat, in the proper manner, and avoid personalization techniques that compromise protective integrity is a challenge.

Over the past few years, hard hat manufacturers have lent their support by developing products that address style along with protection.

MSA’s V-Gard logo hard hats and American Allsafe’s Western Outlaw are some of the more extreme models. These hip, specialized hard hats cost more money than traditional versions. But, as MSA product line manager Jim Byrnes says, "If workers wear them, and they like wearing them, it’s money well spent."

Pledge your allegiance
Byrnes says MSA frequently gets new product ideas from its customers. So when the company received a number of requests from Pittsburgh steel workers to offer a hard hat that resembled a Pittsburgh Steelers football helmet, it saw the opportunity.

Today, MSA offers its top-selling V-Gard hard hats with the Steelers logo, or any of the National Football League’s 30 other teams. Each hard hat carries a team’s logo decals and helmet striping.

MSA also offers V-Gard hard hats with the numbers and logos of seven NASCAR drivers: Jeff Burton, Dale Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Bill Elliott, Bobby Labonte, Mark Martin and Tony Stewart.

The products are officially licensed by the NFL and the individual NASCAR drivers.

"Companies buy them for different reasons," says Byrnes. "Some give them to employees to wear on the job site. They’re just happy to have their guys wearing hard hats. Others give them out as awards. They let the employee pick out his favorite team, and he can wear it to the stadium or race track."

Either way, they are buying them. Byrnes calls sales "substantial."

On the job, the employee wears the hard hat the correct, forward-facing way in order to display his or her fan loyalty. Worn backward, you can’t see the Dale Earnhardt Jr. No. 8 logo; and, most NFL team logos look odd facing the wrong direction.

Howdy, partner
For the city slicker, American Allsafe’s Western Outlaw hard hat might elicit a chuckle. The protective helmet is shaped like a cowboy hat and is available in traditional cowboy hat colors — white, gray, black and straw.

But again, this product has filled a need. It combines head protection and a look many find cool. To date, the company has sold more than 100,000 Western Outlaw hard hats.

Besides its cowboy charm, the hard hat’s wide brim provides added protection. And, if you wear it backward, you look like a greenhorn.

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