COMPLETE HEALTH, ENVIRONMENTAL & SAFETY SERVICES (C.H.E.S.S

Stay On Your Feet

By Janet L. Keyes, CIH and Carol A. Keyes, CSP

Has anyone slipped in your parking lot? Was it from last winter’s ice? Or did someone trip over a curb? Anyone trip on an air hose? Fallen in your shop? Did it happen to an employee? A customer? What did that cost you?

Slips, trips and falls are common – and expensive. According to Liberty Mutual, falls on the same level cost U.S. businesses over $10 billion a year. Slips and trips without falling add another $2.5 billion.

What kinds of injuries are we talking about? If you’re lucky, just bruises and scrapes. But too often, it will be strains and sprains, broken bones and even brain injuries. No wonder your insurance carrier sends out advisories about slip/trip/fall hazards each year.

Whether you slip or trip, the result is the same – you fall, or you stumble but manage to stay upright. But the mechanism is different. With a slip, your feet slide. In a trip, your foot strikes something and stops but your body continues forward. Or you could step and fall – your leading foot lands on something lower or higher than expected, throwing you forward or to the side. You’ve probably experienced that when a step is slightly higher or lower than others.

Slips are caused by a lack of traction. In geek terms, the coefficient of friction between shoes and the walking surface is too low. Think of the slipperiness of detail areas, where soaps and water are used. To eliminate the slip, increase the coefficient of friction. Clean up water or oil spills right away. For chronically wet areas, install mats or nonslip flooring. Reduce foot traffic in the wet or oily areas. Don’t let employees use wash bays as walkways. Even if it’s the quickest route into the building, it’s a bad walking path. Maintain your floors so they stay non-slippery. A highly polished floor may look great, but it won’t look so good when you’re helping a customer back to his feet. Keep the floors clean. Fine dust on your shop floor changes your non-slip shoes into smooth soles, increasing the likelihood of slipping. Follow the advice of the floor manufacturer for cleaning products and use those products according to label directions, so you don’t end up with slippery buildup on the floor. Shoes make a big difference in preventing slips, but that’s harder for you to control. While you can dictate what footwear is allowed in the production areas, you can’t tell customers to wear sensible shoes. That makes paying attention to your floors and parking lots and walkways, in winter and in summer, even more important. Trips happen when feet encounter obstacles. Prevent them by getting rid of the obstacles. Reward good housekeeping practices and don’t allow bad ones. Hang up air hoses and extension cords when they aren’t in use. Route those so they don’t run over walkways. Have designated spots for all equipment. Give employees time to clean up their areas, so “I was too busy to clean” never becomes a valid excuse. If housekeeping is a constant struggle, talk with your employees to find out why it’s a problem. Rearranging the work area might make a huge difference. An example: if all of air hoses are on the west wall, employees on the east side will need to run

the hoses across walking paths. Running an airline to the east wall will cost you, but it’s less than the cost of an injury that sends an employee to the emergency room.

Start mapping where people report tripping. Is there a threshold or a change in flooring that causes trips? If so, eliminate it if you can. If you can’t eliminate it, mark it to provide a highly visible reminder. Do floor drains or grates stick up, creating a tripping hazard? Or are they broken, creating uneven surfaces? Repair them. Is an area poorly lit? Add lights.

Look at where parts are stored. If you require employees to carry bulky parts up and downstairs, you’re asking for an accident. Stairs are required to have handrails, because those have been shown to help control balance and prevent falls. If an employee is carrying a bumper downstairs, how can that person hold the handrail? If you’re so space-limited that you need to store things on a mezzanine, look at alternative ways to get it up and down.

Whenever anyone reports a slip, trip or fall, investigate. Do that for the near misses, too. Where was it? What happened? What caused the problem? Don’t dismiss it as “well, it’s snowy out” or “he was rushing.” We can’t prevent snow, but why did this snowfall cause someone to slip? We can discourage rushing – but why did rushing cause the employee to trip this time but not last time?

Slips, trips and falls cost you money. They can injure employees and customers. We won’t claim you can prevent them completely, but you can’t prevent them at all if you don’t try.

For more information, contact C.H.E.S.S. at (651) 481-9787.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

in sight? why don't we see any technicians the middle of working on the car, argue that the technician was in several stalls. And if you want to an air hose that stretches across that is only partially cleaned up, housekeeping, in general. A spill Picture problems: poor