As the winter holiday season approaches, property owners are taking proactive measures to prevent slippery floors, keep entryways clear, prepare for bigger crowds, and anticipate inclement weather. And while the season typically marks year-high sales for most retail outlets, businesses must take care to ensure everyone’s safety in order to avoid accidents, injuries, and costly litigation.
Of course, some dates require more attention than others, especially when it comes to keeping floors from getting slippery and dangerous. Black Friday, for example, is known for whipping consumer crowds into a frenzy over new gadgets, special sales, and exciting discounts. Coupled with the unpredictable and inherently dangerous nature of winter weather, this particular shopping day
5 Keys to Preventing Slippery Floor Surfaces
There are several effective ways to prevent slippery floors and ensure customer safety. From risk assessment to hiring extra help, the following tips provide a broad overview of the safety strategies every storefront should consider implementing this winter.
Risk Assessment
First, businesses should consider re-visiting existing risk assessments. If a risk assessment has never been performed, it is vital that property owners conduct one immediately. This process involves a thorough walk-through of all customer, employee, and service areas. During the evaluation, managers are encouraged to get feedback from employees and take note of specific safety concerns. Risk assessment also includes a cost-benefit analysis of the potential solutions for each danger encountered.
Floor Assessment
During the risk assessment, special attention must be given to the condition of floor surfaces. Specifically, it is important to identify areas that are likely to cause slips, trips, or falls. Dangerous floor surfaces include those with curbs, lips, uneven transitions, steps, poor lighting, and those that are likely to experience a high degree of liquid accumulation (i.e. entryways and bathroom floors), to name a few.
Commercial Floor Mats
Commercial floor mats are essential when preparing for a busy shopping season, and care should be taken to ensure dangerous floor surfaces are covered with appropriate matting products. Outside, Nitrile rubber mats and weatherproof polypropylene mats are popular products for aggressively cleaning and trapping major debris. Carpet entrance mats make a good addition for just inside the entryway, giving guests a non-slippery floor surface that effectively dries shoes.
Crowd Control
Depending on the services offered at the storefront, businesses may also want to consider investing in crowd control systems. The goal of any crowd control network should always be to channel, serve, and maintain control over large crowds. This keeps customers happy, revenues high, and helps to prevent potentially hostile confrontations among customers.
Maintenance and Staff
Finally, storefronts must employ maintenance staff to ensure the premises are clean, dry, and safe throughout operational hours. This includes entryways, main shopping areas, customer service areas, employee areas, and all other floor spaces that will experience traffic. Storefronts should consider hiring additional maintenance and security personnel on particularly busy shopping days, like Black Friday and the weeks of mid-December.
Slip and Fall Prevention Consultation with Eagle Mat
With more than 30 years experience in commercial floor mats and facility safety products, Eagle Mat provides expert consultation to help American business owners make intelligent investments in facility safety. Our comprehensive online store features industry-leading products designed to meet specific facility safety objectives by keeping environments clean, dry, and safe.
For more information and product consultation, call Client Services at 1-877-333-1018 today.
For more information on preventing slippery floors, including slip and fall case studies, visit NFSI.org.
