The Human Hand Is a Miracle, but Workplaces Don’t Treat It That Way

The following is adapted from Rethinking Hand Safety by Joe Geng.

Robotics engineers have great dreams of duplicating the hand, but still can’t design one that delicately picks a strawberry as well as the lowest-paid field worker.

No other part of the body has the hand’s dexterity. Its sensitivity. Its muscle intelligence. We eat with our hands, dress with our hands, touch our lovers with our hands.

Built with no less than twenty-seven separate bones connected by a complex network of tendons, ligaments, and muscles, this perfectly evolved machine offers a range of motion utterly unique in its beauty and capability.

The human hand is not a minor miracle, it’s a major miracle.

Strangely, however, hand injuries are often taken for granted. I see it all the time.

People Think Hand Injuries Are “Not a Huge Deal”

The boss of an oil rig in California says to one of my territory managers, “These are tough guys out here. They don’t care if their hands get bruised, and we only break a few fingers a year. It’s not a huge deal. We just fix them up and actually they go back out and start working again with their broken finger.”

It’s clear that the rig boss keeps no records on mere hand injuries; performs no follow-up to see if the worker lost range of motion, or the broken fingers mended crooked. For sure, he’s not willing to upgrade to more expensive gloves. A week later, we learn that a worker on the same rig had a finger cut off while wearing fifty-cent nitrile gloves that offered no real protection.

We’re visiting a sheet metal manufacturer where workers handle sharp edges all day long. In the shop, we see that the old guys aren’t using any gloves at all. We actually see one worker in his mid-fifties get cut on a big piece of metal.

When we ask why he’s not wearing gloves, he replies, “I don’t need that kind of stuff. When I get cut, I just use some crazy glue and gaffer tape.” He holds up his hands, which are completely covered in scars, calluses, and some burns. Nearby there’s a younger worker, and we can see him thinking, “If I ask for gloves, my boss will think I’m a sissy.”

It Sucks to “Just Lose a Finger or Two”

Anything as complex as the hand is also extremely difficult to repair. Even if you “just lose a finger or two.” Never mind having your whole hand crushed.

Crazy glue and gaffer tape rarely solve the problem.

If a great violinist injures a hand, we all know it’s a tragedy. But few people seem to realize how a hand injury can deeply impact anyone’s life: prevent them from brushing their teeth, picking a flower, preparing food, handling a fishing pole, changing a baby.

In our training sessions, we sometimes tape up one or two fingers on a worker’s hand, as if the fingers had been lost — then ask the worker to button their shirt, sign their name, or tie their shoes.

Try it. Tape a couple of fingers from your good hand together and try to sign a check, eat, or button your shirt. How about playing the guitar? Picking flowers? Holding your child?

Along with underestimating the true value of fingers and the long-term consequences of hand injuries, most of us underestimate the time and agony of recovery. Days are missed. Weeks are missed. Recovery may require significant help from loved ones, drugs, lengthy physical therapy, multiple operations. Indeed, surgical repairs to the hand are notoriously difficult, and there’s a high probability that a major injury will affect your dexterity forever.

As of this writing, the insurance industry estimates the value of a lost thumb or pointer finger at around $125,000, a whole lost hand at around $250,000; but these are low numbers considering the limitations you would encounter for the rest of your life.

The insurance industry might put a price tag on our hands, but their true worth is immeasurable. It’s time for us to rethink our attitude toward injuries and start treating our hands like the miracles they are.

For more advice on how to better protect people’s hands, you can find Rethinking Hand Safety on Amazon.

Joe Geng grew up among the tanneries of Canada helping his father make gloves, and he has spent his entire life studying industrial hand safety, overseeing glove R&D, and consulting with leading companies like Toyota, Honda, SpaceX, General Motors, Bombardier Aircraft, and Shell Oil. He presently acts as vice president at Superior Glove, the Geng family business that is considered one of the world’s most innovative and disruptive glove manufacturers. Superior is a major global supplier to aerospace, automotive, oil & gas, and construction companies, and has been named one of Canada’s best-managed companies seven years in a row by Deloitte. Joe holds degrees from Trinity Western University and attended Reutlingen leather school in Germany.