Find The Hand™: A Simple Way to Identify Hand Exposure Before Someone Gets Hurt

Most hand injuries in industry are not random. They happen at predictable moments, in predictable tasks, in predictable positions. Find The Hand™ is the discipline of finding those moments before the shift starts — not after the injury has been reported.

The pattern that the data keeps showing

Hand and finger injuries are the most consistently reported serious injury type in NSW mining. In 2024–25, they accounted for 33% of all serious injuries. In 2022–23, the figure was 36%. In 2021–22, it was 43%. The NSW Mine Safety Performance Report 2024–25 notes that injuries to hands or fingers "continued to account for" the largest share — the word "continued" marking a pattern that has persisted across years of reporting, safety programmes, improved PPE, and management commitment.

Queensland mining data tells a similar story: approximately 16% of all lost time injuries in Queensland mining over the five-year period 2007–12 were hand injuries, and maintenance activities accounted for over half of them.

This persistence is the signal worth examining. When an injury type remains at the top of the statistics year after year, despite genuine effort, it suggests the effort is not reaching the root of the exposure. The controls being applied most consistently — gloves, training, incident investigation — are working at the wrong level of the hierarchy for many of the injuries occurring.

Find The Hand™ is an attempt to work at a different level: not reacting to where the hand was when the injury happened, but asking in advance where the hand will be, and why, and what can be done about it before the task begins.

The question

Find The Hand™ is built on a single question, asked before any task that involves mechanical hazards:

Where does the human hand enter this task — and why does it need to be there?

That is the complete framework. Everything else is the application of that question to specific tasks, environments, and hazards.

The question is deliberately simple because it needs to be usable by a supervisor at the start of a shift, by a maintenance fitter before a job starts, by a safety officer reviewing a task procedure, and by a rigger checking the kit before a lift. It is not a formal risk assessment tool with a scoring matrix. It is a thinking prompt that directs attention to the specific point where hand exposure occurs — before the exposure becomes an event.

Why the question matters — and why it is different from existing risk assessment

Most pre-task risk assessments — JHAs, SWMSs, Take 5s, pre-start checks — ask about the hazards associated with a task in general terms. They identify "struck by," "pinch point," "suspended load," "rotating equipment" as hazard categories. These are the right categories. The problem is that naming the category does not locate the exposure.

"Pinch point" as a hazard on a SWMS tells the worker that a pinch point exists somewhere in the task. It does not tell them which specific moment in the task their hand will be closest to the pinch point, or what they would need to do differently at that moment to stay further away.

Find The Hand™ asks for the specific moment, not the general category. Where, exactly, does the hand go? At what point in the task sequence? In what position relative to the hazard? These are different questions, and they produce different answers — answers that point toward specific controls rather than general awareness.

How to use Find The Hand™ in practice

The framework is applied as a structured observation before a task begins. It does not require a formal document, though it can be incorporated into existing pre-task documentation. It requires five minutes of deliberate thinking — ideally by the person who will actually do the work, not only by a supervisor who will observe it.

Step 1: Walk the task in your head

Before the task starts, mentally rehearse the complete sequence from the first action to the last. Identify the tools, the equipment, the loads, and the surfaces that will be involved. Note where other people will be positioned relative to the hazard.

Step 2: Find where the hand goes

At each stage of the mental walkthrough, ask: at this moment, where is my hand, and what is it doing? Identify the specific point in the sequence where the hand is closest to a moving element, a pinch zone, a drop zone, or an impact point. This is the exposure point.

Common exposure points that Find The Hand™ consistently surfaces across Australian mining and heavy industry:

• The moment a tagline is caught or retrieved — where is the hand relative to the load?
• The moment a load is guided onto its landing point — does the hand enter the gap between the load and the surface?
• The moment a spanner is held while being struck — how far is the hand from the impact zone?
• The moment a clearing or cleaning tool enters a machine housing — is the machine isolated?
• The moment a part is pushed into position during change-out — could the load shift while the hand is between it and a fixed structure?
• The moment rigging is detached — is the load fully landed and de-tensioned, or does it still have potential energy that could cause movement?

Step 3: Ask why the hand needs to be there

At each identified exposure point, ask: why does the hand need to be at that position? What function is it performing? Is it the only way that function can be performed, or is there a tool, a procedure, or a redesign of the task that could perform the same function with the hand in a safer position?

This is the critical step. It is also the step most often skipped in conventional hazard identification, because the answer requires imagination — picturing the task done differently — rather than recognition of a known hazard category.

Step 4: Identify the control

Where the function the hand is performing can be replicated by a tool or a procedural change, specify that tool or change and confirm it is available before the task begins. Where the function genuinely requires the hand to be at the exposure point, work through the hierarchy: can the hazard be guarded, isolated, or reduced? What PPE is the last layer?

Step 5: Confirm pre-task

The tool or procedural change identified in Step 4 is pre-task equipment — confirmed as available and working before the task starts, not retrieved during the task. The person doing the work should be able to confirm, before they begin, that the control identified in Step 4 is in place.

Where the framework reveals gaps that checklists miss

Find The Hand™ surfaces exposures that generic checklists tend to miss because it asks about the specific moment rather than the general category. Three examples from Australian industry contexts where this distinction matters:

The tagline retrieval gap. A SWMS that says "use a tagline" satisfies the checklist. Find The Hand™ asks: what happens when the tagline falls under the load — what does the worker do, and is the worker's hand still outside the drop zone when they do it? This question reveals whether the tagline specified is adequate in length and anti-tangle performance, or whether it creates a secondary exposure that the original specification did not address.

The de-tensioning gap. A procedure that says "detach rigging after landing" satisfies the procedure. Find The Hand™ asks: at what point in the de-tensioning sequence does the hand approach the load, and has all potential energy in the sling system been released by then? This question reveals whether the de-tensioning step is completed before hands approach, or whether the hand arrives while the system still has stored energy from residual sling tension.

The striking-task gap. A toolbox talk that says "use impact gloves for flogging spanner work" addresses the PPE level. Find The Hand™ asks: where specifically is the holding hand relative to the impact point of the hammer, and can a spanner-holding tool move that hand further from the strike zone? This question reveals whether the glove is addressing the actual exposure or only the consequence of an injury that should not occur at all.

Who applies it and when

Find The Hand™ is most useful at three points in a task's lifecycle:

During task design or procedure writing. Before a maintenance procedure or lifting plan is finalised, Find The Hand™ applied to the draft sequence identifies the exposure points and allows the procedure to specify the controls rather than leaving them to field judgement. This is the highest-leverage application — a procedure that specifies the anti-tangle tagline, the push/pull pole, and the de-tensioning requirement reaches every worker who follows it.

During pre-task planning. A supervisor or leading hand walking a task mentally before the team starts, using Find The Hand™ as the thinking prompt, can identify gaps in the pre-task equipment or the crew's positioning plan in the time it takes to think through the sequence. This does not require a new document — it requires a different question from the standard "what are the hazards?" to "where does the hand go?"

During incident or near-miss investigation. When a hand injury or near-miss is investigated, Find The Hand™ applied in reverse — tracing the sequence to find where the hand entered the hazard zone and why — produces more specific learnings than a general "struck by" or "pinch point" incident categorisation. The specific moment when the hand entered the exposure tells the investigator what control was absent, not just what hazard category the injury belongs to.

The connection to the hierarchy of controls

Find The Hand™ is not a substitute for the hierarchy of controls. It is the diagnostic step that makes the hierarchy actionable for hand exposure specifically.

The hierarchy of controls tells Australian industry what to do: eliminate, substitute, engineer, administer, protect. Find The Hand™ tells industry where to do it: at the specific point in the specific task where the specific hand enters the specific hazard zone. Without that specificity, the hierarchy tends to produce general answers — guards on the machine, gloves on the hands — that address the category of hazard rather than the exact exposure.

The NSW Resources Regulator has recommended, in Safety Bulletins SB24-04 and SB22-04, that mine operators "involve workers to identify pinch/crush points and identify solutions to control the hazard." Find The Hand™ is one structured way to do that — to direct the worker's attention to the exact point where the hand is at risk, and to use the hierarchy from that specific point rather than from the general description of a task.

The data across multiple years of NSW and Queensland mining performance reporting suggests the general approach has not been sufficient. The persistence of hand injuries at the top of the serious injury statistics — despite PPE improvement, training programmes, and management attention — is a signal that the controls are not reaching the exposure at its source.

Finding the hand, before the shift, is where that changes.

PSC's approach to hand exposure in Australian industry

PSC Hand Safety has developed a range of tools designed to address the specific exposure points that Find The Hand™ typically surfaces in lifting, rigging, maintenance, and tubular handling tasks:

• PSC RiggerSafe® push/pull poles — for the final positioning and tagline retrieval exposures in crane and lifting operations
• PSC LoadGuider and PSC SafeGuider anti-tangle taglines — for the tagline management exposure throughout the lift phase
• PSC Load-It® magnetic positioning tool — for the final positioning exposure on ferrous steel loads
• PSC Fingersaver (PSC-FS-295, PSC-FS-350, PSC-FS-850) — for the impact-zone exposure in flogging and slogging spanner work
• HSF WrenchGrab — for the same striking-tool exposure in workshop and maintenance environments
• PSC TubularGuider — for the tubular positioning exposure on drill floors and pipe racks
• PSC EzyLift — for the manual handling exposure when lifting and positioning pipe and tubulars
• PSC GasGrab — for the gas-cylinder handling exposure where hands contact the cylinder neck or valve area

Each of these tools was developed by identifying a specific, recurring exposure point — a place in a specific task where the hand consistently enters a hazardous position — and engineering an alternative that removes the hand from that position. That is Find The Hand™ as a product development principle. It is also Find The Hand™ as a site safety practice: find the exposure, then find or build what replaces the hand at that exact point.