You Bought It. Why Aren’t They Using It? with Rich Thomas
Your company bought the equipment. Paid for the program. Made the benefit available.
So why aren’t employees using it?
That question shows up everywhere in manufacturing, from PPE and safety programs to training, technology, employee benefits, and tools. And sometimes the problem isn’t the employee. It’s the way the program was designed, introduced, communicated, or reinforced.
In this episode of The Manufacturers’ Network Podcast, Lisa Ryan talks with Rich Thomas, co-founder of CHAOS Supplies, about what more than 30 years in industrial supply and thousands of prescription safety eyewear users have taught him about employee adoption, workplace safety, and the friction that keeps good programs from actually working.
Rich has spent his career supplying safety products to tire and automotive service organizations, manufacturers, utilities, and field crews. His experience with employer-paid prescription safety eyewear programs provides a surprisingly useful case study in a much bigger manufacturing leadership question:
Why do employees ignore something that was specifically provided to help them?
The answer often has less to do with employee resistance than leaders think.
The central takeaway: If employees aren’t using a program, benefit, tool, or piece of safety equipment, don’t immediately assume you have an employee problem. Look for friction in the system. Employees are far more likely to adopt something when it fits their needs, is easy to use, is reinforced by their managers, and is part of the normal way work gets done.
Why Employees Don’t Always Use the PPE You Give Them
Safety glasses sound pretty straightforward. Buy them. Put them on. Protect your eyes.
Except humans have this annoying habit of being human.
Rich explains that style, comfort, and fit are major reasons employees may avoid wearing safety eyewear, including prescription safety glasses. Glasses that fog up, slide down, pinch, feel cumbersome, or make it difficult to see can create enough friction that employees simply stop wearing them.
That creates an important distinction for manufacturing leaders: availability isn’t adoption.
An employer can technically provide PPE and still have a workforce that isn’t consistently using it.
The same principle applies far beyond safety glasses.
Companies spend money on training platforms nobody logs into, benefits employees barely understand, software people work around, tools that stay in the crib, and safety programs that look terrific on paper.
Buying something is the easy part. Getting people to use it consistently is where leadership begins.
Is It an Employee Problem or a System Problem?
When a program isn’t being used, it’s tempting to blame the people.
Rich challenges that assumption.
If employees aren’t wearing required safety glasses and management routinely allows it, the organization has helped create that norm. A written safety policy matters, but employees also watch what supervisors tolerate, what coworkers actually do, and what happens when someone ignores the rules.
Lisa connects this to the difference between policies and norms.
The policy may say safety glasses are required beyond a certain point on the plant floor.
But if employees routinely walk past that point without them and nobody says anything, the real rule becomes obvious: We say you have to wear them, but apparently you don't.
Until somebody gets hurt. Then suddenly everybody cares again.
That gap between the written policy and everyday behavior is where safety culture is actually created.
Start With the People Who Are Using It
One of Rich’s most practical recommendations is refreshingly simple.
If you want to understand why employees aren’t using something, start by talking to the employees who are.
What works for them? Why do they use it? What do they like about it?
Then talk to the people who aren’t using it.
Maybe the glasses slide off their face. Maybe they’re too tight and cause headaches. Maybe they fog up. Maybe the employee doesn’t know a prescription eyewear benefit exists. Maybe nobody explained how to get it.
That information is far more useful than sitting in a conference room deciding employees “just don’t care about safety.”
Rich points out that one-size-fits-all safety glasses don’t actually fit everyone. Lisa takes the point further: one size fits all doesn’t work particularly well for much of anything in the workplace. It doesn’t work for PPE, recognition, training, or many of the other programs companies expect employees to embrace.
Safety Culture Is What Happens When Nobody Is Watching
Manufacturing safety culture isn’t created by posters, policies, or an annual training session alone.
It shows up in everyday behavior.
If one employee sees a coworker operating equipment without the proper eye protection, do they feel comfortable saying something? Can a coworker say, “Dude, you gotta put your safety glasses on,” without it becoming a confrontation?
Lisa and Rich discuss how psychological safety can support physical safety. Employees need to know that speaking up about unsafe behavior is part of looking out for each other rather than policing each other.
That changes the conversation from “Wear these because OSHA says so” to “Wear these because we’d really like you to go home with the same number of functioning eyeballs you brought to work.”
That’s a different kind of safety culture.
PPE Compliance Gets Easier When the PPE Actually Works
Employees are more likely to use protective equipment when it doesn’t make their job harder.
Rich discusses prescription safety eyewear that employees can wear throughout the workday rather than constantly switching between regular glasses and safety glasses. He also explains why anti-fog properties, fit, comfort, and style can affect whether employees keep their glasses on.
That raises a useful question for any manufacturing leader evaluating PPE or another employee program:
Are employees resisting the program, or are they resisting unnecessary friction?
Those are two very different problems.
Near Misses Aren’t Proof the System Worked
The conversation also turns to near misses and the danger of treating “nobody got hurt” as proof that everything is fine.
Sometimes nobody got hurt because the safety system worked.
Sometimes nobody got hurt because they got lucky.
Lisa shares the example of a former colleague in the welding industry who lost an eye when a bungee cord snapped. Rich shares a near miss from welding when a spark traveled inside his helmet and came dangerously close to his eye.
Those experiences reinforce why eye protection and other forms of PPE can’t become something employees think about only after an incident.
Near misses should create conversations before luck runs out.
Make Safety Visible Without Making It Miserable
Rich suggests that manufacturers make safety initiatives visible, positive, and even fun instead of introducing them as another compliance mandate.
Lisa, naturally, immediately goes to a safety-glasses fashion show.
And why not?
If one reason employees avoid safety glasses is that they still picture the ugly, clunky shop glasses they wore decades ago, showing them better options can change perceptions.
A launch, demonstration, employee challenge, safety month, or yes, even a ridiculous runway through the shop can get employees talking about the program.
The point isn’t the gimmick.
The point is making the desired behavior visible enough that it starts becoming normal.
Key Questions Answered in This Episode
- Why don’t employees always use PPE their employer provides?
- How can manufacturers increase safety-glasses compliance?
- What causes employees to stop wearing prescription safety eyewear?
- How do comfort, fit, style, and anti-fogging affect PPE adoption?
- How can plant managers tell whether they have an employee problem or a system-design problem?
- What’s the difference between a written safety policy and the actual safety norms on the plant floor?
- How can manufacturers create a stronger workplace safety culture?
- Why should leaders talk to employees before buying or rolling out new programs?
- How can psychological safety support physical safety?
- What can near misses teach manufacturing teams about risk?
- How can manufacturers improve employee adoption of programs, tools, training, and benefits?
What Manufacturing Leaders Can Do This Week
Don’t start by asking why employees aren’t complying.
Start by watching what’s actually happening.
Find employees who consistently use the PPE, tool, training, benefit, or program you’re evaluating and ask what works for them.
Then find employees who don’t use it and ask what gets in the way.
You may discover a motivation problem.
You may also discover something much easier to fix: poor fit, confusing communication, an inconvenient process, lack of awareness, inconsistent supervisor behavior, or a program designed without enough input from the people expected to use it.
That’s useful information.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn
- Why providing PPE doesn’t guarantee employees will use it
- How comfort, style, fit, and usability influence safety compliance
- Why prescription safety eyewear can improve the employee experience
- How managers unintentionally create unsafe workplace norms
- Why employee adoption problems may actually be system-design problems
- How frontline conversations reveal friction leaders may never see
- Why one-size-fits-all approaches fail in safety, training, and other workplace programs
- How near misses can reveal risks before someone gets hurt
- Why consistent management behavior matters to manufacturing safety culture
- How manufacturers can make safety initiatives more visible and engaging
- What plant managers can look for when an employee program isn’t getting used
About Rich Thomas
Rich Thomas co-founded CHAOS Supplies in Phoenix, Arizona, and has more than 30 years of experience in industrial supply. His company serves tire and automotive service organizations, manufacturers, utilities, and field crews with safety-related products and industrial supplies.
Rich has developed particular expertise in prescription safety eyewear programs and has studied years of program usage to better understand what drives employee adoption and what gets in the way. His work focuses on helping employers make eye protection easier, more comfortable, and more practical for the people expected to wear it.
Connect with Rich Thomas
Learn more about Rich and prescription safety eyewear programs at CHAOS RX Optics.
Website: CHAOSRXOptics.com
Topics and Keywords
Manufacturing safety, workplace safety, safety culture in manufacturing, PPE compliance, personal protective equipment, prescription safety glasses, prescription safety eyewear, industrial safety glasses, eye protection, OSHA safety, ANSI safety glasses, employee safety, manufacturing PPE, PPE adoption, employee adoption, safety program implementation, manufacturing leadership, plant managers, frontline supervisors, psychological safety, physical safety, workplace norms, safety policies, near misses, eye injury prevention, industrial supply, employee training, manufacturing training, safety training, workplace compliance, safety program participation, system design, employee behavior, manufacturing workforce, automotive service safety, utility worker safety, welding safety, industrial eye protection, PPE fit and comfort, anti-fog safety glasses.
About The Manufacturers’ Network Podcast
The Manufacturers’ Network Podcast, hosted by Lisa Ryan, CSP, features practical conversations with manufacturing leaders, experts, and practitioners about the issues affecting the industrial workforce.
Topics include manufacturing leadership, AI and automation, human judgment, employee retention, knowledge transfer, workforce development, workplace culture, employee engagement, safety, and the future of manufacturing.
Lisa Ryan is a manufacturing keynote speaker, author of Smart Plant: Aligning AI, Automation, and People, and founder of Grategy. Her work helps manufacturing leaders prepare their people for AI and automation while protecting the human judgment, critical knowledge, and workplace practices their operations depend on.
Because sometimes the problem isn’t getting employees to comply. It’s figuring out what’s making the right behavior harder than it needs to be.
