Slippery when wet? Not Anymore

Winter weather provides more than its share of opportunities for slips, trips and falls, but some slips occur without a snowflake in sight — on wet or oily surfaces, loose rugs or slippery floors.

“After reviewing our employee injury reports, we discovered several slips, trips and falls in our maintenance departments,” recalls Ken Saveley, Facility Manager, Rakow Center, Dundee Township Park District. “A couple of those slips happened when stripping our floors and washing and cleaning our locker rooms.”

“Avoiding slips, trips and falls while cleaning and maintaining floors is a special challenge,” agrees PDRMA Risk Management Consultant Jackie Pierce, “because these jobs require employees to work on wet surfaces.”

Waxing floors can also be a problem. Some waxes provide a beautiful shine, but when wet they can become as slippery as ice. And freshly applied wax is quite slippery until the floors are thoroughly buffed.

Pierce worked with Dundee Township to create a Plan of Action (POA) to minimize the risk of slips, trips and falls, prevent employee injuries, and reduce the costs of associated workers’ compensation claims.

“When members take a more active role in identifying where their losses and exposures are, they can focus their risk management resources exactly where they need them,” explains Pierce. By taking the time to analyze their agency’s loss history — and the causes leading to those losses — members develop POAs to address their specific exposures. Agencies can complete some POAs in a single year, but the plans can also be multi-year projects. Regardless of the time involved, the results of POAs are the same; fewer people are hurt, and the plans reduce risks and improve cost savings. “That’s a winning combination for every PDRMA member,” adds Pierce.

Dundee Township became a pilot group for what they dubbed their “Grippers for Strippers POA.” A PDRMA Be Safe Solution, Grippers for Strippers^® reduce slips and falls without damaging walking surfaces by increasing traction in water, soap and wax. They fit over normal footwear to provide additional “gripability” on slick surfaces. “We use them each time we strip floors,” says Saveley. ”It’s a dangerous task, and we do it often with several programming rooms at our disposal. 

“We also created a Non-slip Shoe Policy and included it in our maintenance department training manual at the Rakow Center (recreation/fitness center),” Saveley notes. “We had all staff try them on to make sure we had the appropriate sizes and went over expectations as well as the new policy. They preferred using tall rubber boots that kept their pants legs’ dry while washing down the locker rooms, but they like the Grippers for stripping the floors. We haven’t had an accident directly related to stripping floors since we implemented our policy and introduced these shoes.”