Here’s four quick and easy ways to increase the floor safety in your commercial or retail main entrance!
- Conduct a safety audit. Slips, trips, and fall accidents tend to happen in the same spots in any given building, but it’s sometimes hard to pinpoint the reason why due to “house blindness”! Walk the trouble spots with a person unfamiliar with the day-to-day operations of your building to see if they can help you spot the areas of concern that you might be missing. Clearly documenting the where, why, and how of slip and fall accidents that have already occurred can also be helpful in uncovering problems to be solved during a safety audit.
- Use – and change up – your warning signs. While it’s tempting to leave out a Caution, wet floor sign all the time “just in case”, it’s actually counter-productive. If wet floor signs are left out all the time, they quickly blend into the background for your regular visitors and stop carrying any message about truly dangerous conditions. Safety cones, wet floor signs, and caution beacons should be deployed when the weather turns inclement, but also taken down once floor moisture and slipping is no longer a concern.
- Indicate hazardous walkways. Some walkways are simply not easy to make safer. Heritage buildings, shifting sidewalk slabs, or construction / work zones all present their own unique challenges to pedestrian traffic, especially if that pedestrian traffic is walking while distracted. While you can’t absolutely prevent every possible accident, you can definitely mitigate your risk by clearly indicating potential hazards on walkways with temporary measures. Neon, reflective, or photo-luminescent marking tape is a low-cost but very effective tool for this job.
- Stay on top of your floor care. The root cause of many slip and fall accidents is simple negligence when it comes to floor care and cleaning. Dirt isn’t just unsightly; it can be as dangerous as tiny marbles underfoot when it comes to slip and fall accidents. Many accidents occur because wet spills aren’t mopped up promptly, or oil films are left behind after cleaning with improper chemicals, or by the use of old, dirty mops that spread grease from kitchen or garage areas to other entrances.