Reduce Injuries and Labor Costs With Building Floor Mats

Jan/san distributors should explain to clients that building floor mats can help ease the costs associated with cleanliness and risk associated with accidents. For example, it costs about $50,000 to settle each slip, trip and fall claim, says Evan Ghen, vice president of sales and operations at Scoles Floorshine Industries in Wall Township, N.J.

“We look at entryway matting as entryway filters,” says Ghen. “You want that filter at that front door so it’s much easier to maintain your building. So there are huge cost savings.”

The investment cost for building floor mats greatly depends on environmental factors, Ghen says.

The type of mat “depends on the area, depends on the building and depends on what is around it,” he adds. An entryway into a school from an athletic area will be treated with mats differently than an office building that is adjacent to sidewalks with high foot traffic, for example.

The distributor should “do the math” with the building manager, comparing the cleaning and risk costs of having a complete matting system versus not having one. Those costs should then be compared to the investment cost of the building floor mats.

“Most people get it right away when you show them the true savings, when they see the labor and they see the safety,” Ghen says.

Using Building Floor Mats  To Highlight Transition Areas

Building floor mats do not stop at the front door or the lobby. Flow-through mats can be placed in break rooms to eliminate slippage hazards by absorbing liquids that leak from ice and coffee machines.

In multi-use areas, such as at a manufacturing facility where warehousing, administration and plant operations may be housed in a single building, scraper mats may be suitable from the factory floor to the office. However, a “stickier,” anti-static mat may be needed outside of a clean room to trap dust, dirt and liquids to prevent the corruption of products or manufacturing processes, Spencer says.

“Anytime you transition from one floor surface to another…you need to have walk-off there,” says Spencer. 

Transition areas with hard floor surfaces, such as concrete, need more building floor mats than carpeted areas, which “act like a kitchen sink,” by trapping dirt and debris, he adds.

Distributors can suggest anti-fatigue matting to be placed throughout an area where workers stand or walk for hours at a time. These mats can greatly decrease back, foot and knee injuries, Uselman says. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and insurance claims can run in the tens of thousands of dollars, Uselman says.

“A mat that helps prevent those injuries is worth its weight in gold,” Uselman says. “It really doesn’t matter how much that mat is, it will not be as much as that OSHA claim and what that worker’s compensation claim is going to run you in the long run.”

Additional Uses For Building Floor Mats

Advances in matting technology and a demand for style has prompted mat manufacturers to expand their selections. As a result, manufacturers now offer building floor mats that are customizable in terms of their shape, size and color. Distributors should know these options when discussing matting with commercial building managers, especially in facilities that are home to corporate headquarters and executive suites.

“They can do anything you can think of with the matting to make it look right and to serve its purpose,” Ghen says.

In addition to being a mechanism to keeping a building cleaner, building floor mats can be used to guide visitors in facilities that are home to several businesses and firms. This can be accomplished by placing mats in hallways to meet and lead visitors who are unfamiliar with their destination.

In restrooms, urinal and commode mats can be installed to capture urine and  prevent unsanitary and slippery puddles, odor problems and floor damage.