Slips and Falls: Avoiding The Blame Game

A customer slips on a greasy cafeteria floor. An elderly shopper trips on a grape left lying in the grocery’s produce aisle. An office worker falls when he doesn’t see a “wet floor” sign on a marble floor.

Slip-and-fall accidents happen every day, but but many cleaning professionals don’t pay a whole lot of attention to preventing them, until something happens.

“They don’t want to spend the money on it,” says Kevin Thompson, sales manager, Brookmeade Hardware & Supply Co. Nashville, Tenn.

“It’s a cycle item,” he continues, “They get a letter from their insurance carrier warning about slip-and-fall safety, go to a seminar that talks about slip-and-fall risks, or they hear about an accident — that’s the rare time when it’s an issue.”

Even more frightening is owners who say they aren’t worried about slip-and-fall accidents and other safety hazards because “that’s what insurance is for.”

“It’s like anything else,” says Barry Walker, corporate officer for City Supply Co., Egg Harbor Township, NJ. “Until it happens to them, they aren’t that worried.”

But, they should be worried — according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, more than one million people seek medical attention from a hospital emergency room for slip-and-fall accidents each year. More than 12,000 people die.

Fifteen percent of the estimated 3.8 million disabling workplace injuries each year are due to slips, trips, or falls, according to the National Safety Council. These accidents account for 12 to 15 percent of all workers’ compensation costs. The average direct cost for one disabling injury now approaches $28,000. In the case of a death on the job, the average cost has recently been estimated at $940,000. Also, customer accidents can raise liability-insurance premiums, and employee accidents can raise workers’ compensation rates as well.

Half of all slip-related falls happen because of unsafe or unclean floors, according to the National Floor Safety Institute; building service contractors often are the first ones to be blamed when an incident occurs.Blame can occur whether or not the BSC actually was at fault or had any knowledge of the hazard before an accident.

Therefore, it’s vital that BSCs have a solid prevention program in place, and that they partner with and educate their customers on how to minimize the risk. Sanitary-supply distributors, too, can provide an important educational role for BSCs, and here, they offer their slip-and-fall prevention and training advice.

Get With The Program While proper products are important in reducing slip-and-fall accidents (see sidebar, p. 36), they are only a small piece of the puzzle.

“It’s almost never product related,” says Fritz Gast, executive vice president of P.B. Gast & Sons, Grand Rapids, Mich. “It’s procedure related.”

Cleaners should use the correct equipment and chemicals, clean frequently, deal with spills promptly, properly mark wet areas, and always be on the lookout for potential safety hazards.

Managers also should frequently inspect working and walking areas to identify environmental and equipment hazards that could cause slips, trips and falls. Immediate corrective action should be taken.

All slips, trips and falls, with or without injury, should be reported (to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, should circumstances warrant, as well as any state or local agencies that require notification), recorded and thoroughly investigated. Corrective action to prevent such a repeat occurrence should be taken immediately.

It’s wise to have regular meetings to discuss floor safety. This is a time to consider procedural or product changes, and to look at slip-and-fall incidents and how they can be avoided in the future.

“All employees should be involved,” says Jim Traudt, vice president of Right Choice, a distributor in Milwaukee. “A good program has people [who] are paying attention and dealing with the problem right away.”

Not only can a good program prevent accidents, it can also be an important tool in defending against litigation. A single claim can cost a company thousands of dollars. While many claims are legitimate, plenty of others are fraudulent. Either way, a company that can demonstrate that it has a thorough floor care program will likely fare better in court than a company with no such program.

Also, it’s important for BSCs to maintain their program. Starting a great program and then quickly forgetting about it doesn’t do anyone any good.

“A lot of people have programs in place, but they don’t have continuous follow-through,” Traudt says. “They work [the program] for a while but then it doesn’t become that important until it’s too late.”

An essential part of any program is training. New employees should be given extensive training on the prevention of slip-and-fall accidents and all employees should be regularly retrained. Unsafe practices should be corrected immediately.

Also, contractors with high turnover must remember that a new crew needs new training.

“You can train a whole staff and it could turn over again in 60 days,” Gast says. “You have to constantly retrain on the procedures.”

Becky Mollenkamp is a Des Moines, Iowa-based freelance writer. A version of this story appeared in the October 2004 issue of Sanitary Maintenance.