It boggled my mind when I was in front of the TV this past holiday season and saw CNN run a promo on their new original series, "Vengeance: Killer Co-workers." The commercial shows an employee sitting at his desk with a gun in his hand. But the No. 1 workplace killer doesn't carry a gun -- it's slips and falls.
Much of the past 35 years of my career has been spent trying to prevent this biggest killer in the workplace -- costly slips, falls and traction enhancement -- to promote a safe environment for rolling traffic, including forklifts. While slips and falls barely make the local newspaper even when an employee dies, these accidents can hit your bottom line hard and severely hinder your goal of making a safer environment for your most valuable asset: your employees.
Products available
Anti-slip floor coatings, plates, ladder rungs and tapes have been used globally for over 40 years and continue to save lives to this day. Anti-slip products should far exceed OSHA and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines, and since some were even originally formulated and designed for the U.S. Navy flight decks of aircraft carriers, they are extremely durable. These products can be used for barefoot traffic in a locker room or around a pool, with some coatings capable of handling an 18-wheeler driving over them 24 hours a day. In this case, the coatings protect the truck driver from slipping when gassing up in areas that are wet or slippery, whether from rain, soapy water after cleaning the windshield or -- you guessed it -- diesel fuel. Whatever the nature of the traffic or contamination making the surface unsafe and slippery, the right solution is out there.
The Houston advantage
If you are local to the Houston area, there are even more options available to you and your company now. For example, some companies will personally come in and conduct a slip and fall survey of your entire facility, looking for hot spots that can be handled by your own maintenance crew with minimal or no downtime. Any other areas found -- including the loading-dock diamond plate (a forklift operator's nightmare), concrete ramps, slick grating or ladders -- will be noted as well and can be taken care of when you deem appropriate. I find it best to walk around with a plant or operations manager, since they usually know where safety problems are before I even spot them. It would be nice if they were taken care of when first noticed; however, that's the essence of the safety business: proactive versus reactive. Pay now, or pay dearly later on.
Protect your employees
With that said, you will not see me on CNN in 2020, and you probably won't see yourself or your company making headlines for a devastating slip or fall accident either. However, if you do experience one of these accidents, your profits and losses will be affected, liabilities will rise, and you may alienate an employee base doing anything and everything they can not to slip and hurt themselves, trip from a ladder, lose traction while pulling material off a truck with the doors open on a rainy day, etc.
Safety is in our blood in this industry, and you can surely find help combatting the No. 1 workplace killer: slips and falls. On a side note, one of the greatest safety inventions of all time is the seatbelt, yet people to this day don't use them. In fact, we had to make it a law and post it on billboards in Texas: "Click It or Ticket." Unfortunately, I can't do that with slips and falls, but if we work together, we won't have to.
Consider setting a date and time for a no-charge anti-slip safety survey at one of your facilities. You have absolutely nothing to lose, and you might be saving an employee's life.
For more information, visit www.newguardcoatings.com or call (832) 243-6680.
