Every year, personal protective equipment helps millions of employees stay safe at work. From those trusty goggles to your favorite pair of steel toed boots, personal protective equipment is a vital part of any safety plan and required by OSHA to reduce your risk of exposure to hazard when engineering and administrative controls are not effective. Unfortunately, enforcing your employees to use their personal protective equipment can sometimes feel like an uphill battle. We've got some tips for you today to help overcome these obstacles.

1. Be a leader with your actions. This is one of the best ways to motivate your employees because if you're not willing to use personal protective equipment on the job then why should your employees have to? Look at it from your employees' point of view: it's hard to trust someone that says one thing and does another.

2. Educate your employees on the importance of wearing personal protective equipment because when they understand they reasoning behind a certain policy, they're more likely to follow it. Rather than just handing your employees a face mask and telling them to put it on, explain to them why they need to use each specific type of personal protective equipment for their job.

3. Keep open communication and give them an environment where they feel like you truly listen to them. Here's an idea: Involve employees in discussions concerning what specific PPE brands, colors and models to purchase since they’ll be the ones using it during the workday.