Eye Hazards: Putting Safety ‘In Focus’

As a leading supplier of hazardous and industrial area electrical, lighting and control gear products, Hubbell Scotland’s systems is renowned for delivering performance in extreme environments.

With approximately 60 employees at its Glasgow site, covering roles such as engineering and assembly with operatives carrying out tasks including spot welding, high pressure water applications, testing, grinding and pedestal drilling, Hubbell wanted to ensure its staff were also able to work safely and effectively at all times.

Despite relatively few eye hazards on the shop floor Hubbell’s parent company, Hubbell Incorporated made the decision to implement a mandatory safety eyewear policy programme across its operations. To help them achieve this, the team at Arco’s Trafford Park branch recommended that Hubbell Scotland seek the help of to performance safety eyewear specialist Riley, to provide workers with its ‘On+Sight’ eye care service.

Working with Hubbell Scotland’s HSE Manager Brian Barr, the team spent two days at its premises. Staff had access to a fully equipped mobile optician vehicle with an appointment given to each worker to have their eyes tested.

Eye tests were carried out on every worker to determine their eye health, provide the right safety eyewear and to ensure that workers with prescription eyewear requirements were provided with leading safety solutions that matched their specific needs.

Minimising downtime

Testing test people in the workplace mean that there was very little disruption and inconvenience and downtime was also minimised.

Workers also had access to a wider choice of prescription safety frames than a typical high street optician, It was during this process that one of Hubbell’s was identified to have a serious eye health issue that, if left untreated, could have led to the loss of his sight in one eye. The worker was immediately sent to hospital where a deeper macular degenerative matter, which he was completely unaware of, was diagnosed and emergency treatment was given.

“The service, saved time, was convenient for us and the workforce really saw the health benefits of us carrying out the tests. We get high performance products for our workforce and in the case of our Production Supervisor – to identify a potentially life changing issue was testament to just how beneficial the service is.” said Brian Barr.

“Sometimes going to the optician is a job that gets put down the list of people’s priorities, but our workers loved the fact they did not need the inconvenience of arranging an eye test themselves and in their own time and it was all done for them by qualified personnel at work. It was a real win-win.” he added.