7 Tips for Helping Your Workers Stay Cool in the Heat

Working outside in high temperatures can cause debilitating or even life-threatening illnesses. However, you can prevent conditions such as heat cramps, heat strokes, and heat exhaustion by following the right safety procedures. Keep employees safe with these seven tips for helping your workers stay cool in the heat.

1. Ensure Hydration

Dehydration is a primary contributor to heat exhaustion, so supply workers with fresh, cool, and safe drinking water. Employees should drink water and electrolyte drinks and avoid caffeinated beverages such as coffee and soda.

Also, employees should come to work hydrated. If they come to work dehydrated, they might not be able to give their bodies enough water throughout the day. Furthermore, employees should not wait to feel thirsty to start hydrating during the workday. Even if someone doesn’t notice they’re dehydrated, their physical performance can decline.

When working in the heat, workers can stay hydrated by drinking about 8 ounces of water every 15–20 minutes. However, ensure employees are aware to not drink more than 48 ounces of fluids in an hour. Drinking this much can cause a dangerously low salt concentration in the blood. Finally, workers should drink enough fluids after work to replace what they lost through sweat. It often takes hours for a person to drink enough to rehydrate, so hydrating after work is important for continued health.

2. Encourage Dressing for the Weather

Another tip for helping your workers stay cool in the heat is to ensure they dress for the weather. While workers shouldn’t wear baggy clothes, loose-fitting clothes allow more air to circulate around the body.

Work T-shirts created for warm and hot weather have various features to cool the body. For example, mesh side panels improve ventilation. Moisture-wicking fabric improves sweat evaporation, which cools the skin and releases heat from the body. The body can’t maintain an acceptable, safe temperature if sweat remains on the skin because of humidity.

High-visibility workwear for hot weather can also have these cooling features. And the high-visibility components—bright colors and reflective tape—protect workers during the day and in low-light conditions. Ensure workers wear the right ANSI-rated safety gear for their task and that the material is breathable.

3. Conduct Trainings on Heat-Related Illnesses

Supervisors and workers should receive training regarding heat-related illnesses. At the end of the training, attendees should understand how to avoid heat illness, the signs and symptoms of heat illness, and how to react to heat illness. Heat stress can deteriorate fine motor performance, lead to illness, necessitate hospitalization, or even cause more severe consequences.

Heat-related conditions include the following:

• Heat stroke
• Heat exhaustion
• Heat cramps
• Heat rash

Designing a safer work environment to avoid heat illness is essential. But your workplace should also have an emergency plan to deal with heat illness. Communicate the plan to supervisors and workers. The program should detail what to do if someone experiences heat illness, how to contact emergency help, and how to apply the appropriate first aid.

4. Adjust the Work Schedule and Intensity

Employers should encourage workers to work short shifts and take frequent breaks on hotter days. You can do this by rotating workers, splitting shifts, or adding extra workers to a job. Supervisors should advise workers to slow down physical activity, such as by reducing manual handling speeds.

Schedule work for earlier in the day, when possible, but remember that early morning hours tend to have higher humidity levels. Early morning start times can also increase worker fatigue. Reschedule non-essential outdoor work to days with a reduced heat index.

Lastly, don’t expect employees to pace themselves for safe work. Instead, adapt and enforce a work and rest schedule for your worksite. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) shares schedules that detail how many minutes employees should rest and work, depending on the temperature and level of physical activity.

5. Acclimatize Workers

Heat acclimatization is the process of improving a person’s heat tolerance. The best way to acclimate is to gradually increase an employee’s workload in a hot setting. Heat acclimatization reduces heat exposure’s strain on vital organs, improves the body’s sweating performance, and increases worker comfort with doing physical tasks in the heat.

New employees have an elevated risk for heat illness, but all workers must adjust to working in the heat. The acclimatization period takes about one to two weeks. However, people lose acclimatization and return to their baseline after about one week without working in the heat.

For 7 to 14 days, let workers gradually increase their work time. Acclimatization requires at least two hours of heat exposure a day, and you can divide this time into two separate one-hour periods. The body will adjust to the level of work demanded during the acclimatization period. Light or brief physical work prepares the worker for that level of physical activity in the heat. For longer or more strenuous tasks, encourage higher-intensity physical activity during the acclimatization period. Furthermore, workers who are hydrated and nourished with regular meals acclimate better.

6. Enforce Breaks To Cool Off

Ensure workers have access to fully shaded or air-conditioned areas for rest and cooling down. Cool locations include shady areas, air-conditioned vehicles and buildings, nearby tents, and areas with fans and misting devices.

OSHA provides standards for how often and long workers should take rest breaks. Take longer breaks more frequently as heat stress rises. Breaks should be long enough for workers to recover from the heat. Use OSHA’s heat hazard assessment to determine your worksite’s Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT), which measures heat stress in direct sunlight. Also, use your workplace’s heat-related illness prevention program to engineer safer working conditions.

The worker’s physical activity level and the individual worker’s personal risk factors affect how much time they will need to rest and cool down. Consider these factors and ensure workers do not skip breaks, especially in hot conditions.

Ensuring workers stay hydrated, wear weather-appropriate safety clothes, and know the signs of heat illness keeps them safe. As an employer, minimize workplace risks by engineering a safer environment, creating a mindful schedule, and enforcing resting breaks. With these practices in place, you will create a safer, more productive, and more enjoyable work environment for your employees.

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