Safety
As a former employee of a global company providing helicopter services to the offshore oil and gas industry, I feel it is my responsibility to bring to the attention of the wider aviation community a very worrying "initiative" this company has introduced - forcing engineers/technicians to wear helmets while working on the A/C. Now this might sound like a good idea, but in fact it is an extremely dangerous thing to have in the workplace. As we are all aware, one of the most significant contributors to maintenance errors is distractions, and the wearing of helmets is a major distraction. They significantly limit the engineers/technicians access and ability to carryout inspections thourouly, they cause a significant discomfort - headaches etc (distraction), they are ill fitting (distraction), they can't wear hats or appropriate hearing protection when wearing a helmet and they cause heat stress in hot & humid environments (distraction) etc etc. On top of all this, they are (engineers/technicians) are constantly threatened with there jobs if they remove there helmets or even raise concerns about them!
In my opinion all this is a serious safety concern and the wearing of helmets by engineering/maintenance staff should be prevented and/or removed from the aviation industry before its too late!