The award winning HTI Safety Education Program develops and distributes videos, booklets, wall charts and other safety materials and promotes hand tool safety through public service announcements, trade publications, trade shows, trade and technical schools.
Educating users on the safe use of hand tools has been an important objective of the Hand Tools Institute (HTI) for the past 50 years. Nearly every form of media has been employed to spread the word, including radio, television, film/videotape/DVD, advertising supplements in magazines, newspapers, trade shows, and the internet. Safety education materials include posters, wall charts, books, film, and brochures.
The National Safety Council (NSC) has consistently supported HTI programs through its various channels to the national safety community, most notably inviting HTI to participate in one of the country’s largest and best-known safety exhibitions, the National Safety Expo. The NSC exhibit is an excellent communication vehicle for HTI to convey the hand tools safety message to a management group responsible for developing hand tool safety. In addition to the NSC, HTI participates in the annual exposition of the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), formerly the American Vocational Association.
To assist in reducing the frequency and severity of eye injuries in the workplace, the Hand Tools Institute joined forces with eye protection equipment manufacturers and the National Society to Prevent Blindness to form the “Eye Safety Industry Council” (ESIC). The purpose of ESIC is to develop and distribute educational information to inform and educate consumers, employers, safety and health professionals and management how to prevent eye injuries. Included in the ESIC proposed programs are exhibits, presentations promoting safety legislation, and preparation of applicable safety standards.
The Hand Tools Institute inaugurated its use of live radio announcements in 1982. Since that time, an average of 295 radio stations per year in 45 states have broadcast the HTI hand tool safety announcement to a combined estimated listening audience of over 100,000,000. Reports from the agency used to place the announcement indicated that all 50 states have been reached by the radio spot.
HTI’s safety education program took a giant step forward in 1991 when the first ever “National Hand Tool Safety Month” was originated. Press releases were mailed to hundreds of the nation’s newspapers and approximately 6,000 radio networks designating the month of May as “National Hand Tool Safety Month.” In 1992 the program was expanded to include TV coverage in addition to radio and newspaper publicity. In 1998 over 50 major TV channels including NBC, ABC, FOX and CBS affiliates, as well as independent TV stations, telecast the 120-second “HTI National Hand Tool Safety Month” message. The telecast included many of the major markets (New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Boston) as well as rural areas, thereby reaching a broad-spectrum audience.
HTI has been able to achieve extensive coverage through use of public service time on the nation’s major television and radio stations. Over the life of the program to date, the Institute has produced and distributed five public service spots that have received more than 800,000,000 TV audience exposure. Several of the Institute’s TV spots received the endorsement of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission for their excellence.
HTI also aggressively promotes the availability of safety training materials for use in industrial training programs and classroom instruction. The training materials include the “Guide to Hand Tools”, first published in 1971 and expanded to 100 pages in 1985, with sales exceeding 1 million copies. In 2008 the Guide was updated and published in both English and Spanish.
“Hand Tool Safety in the Workplace” is the 29-minute video that includes more than 100 recreated situations that apply to employees using hand tools on the job. Throughout the video, viewers are alerted to hand tool safety practices as well as the dangers of hand tool misuse that lead to serious injury. The much in demand hand tool safety video has sold over 2000 copies and is available in VHS and DVD.
The 22” x 34” extensively illustrated Hand Tool Safety Wall Charts are handy tool identifiers of how and how NOT to use some 80 different hand tools. The wall charts, an economical and well sought after training aid, have sales over 130,000 copies.
A set of 12 different Hand Tool Safety Posters, introduced early in 1996, each illustrating 4 different safety rules with the international “don’t do” symbol for multi-lingual purposes are also available. Member manufacturers have enthusiastically supported the marketing of these training materials by making them available to their customers.
|
