Every year, American businesses lose over $60 billion to workplace injury and illness. Remarkably, almost one-fifth of that figure comes from a single category — slips, trips, and falls — which cost businesses more than $11 billion every year. That number’s especially concerning for providers of janitorial services, as many of these incidents involve unsafe cleaning practices.
As a business owner or facility manager, choosing the wrong janitorial service could increase the risk of slips, trips, and falls on your property. Meanwhile, the right cleaning company can help to reduce this risk.
What Causes Slips, Trips & Falls
Slips, trips, and falls account for 35% of accidentalworkplace injuries in the U.S. Typically, these injuries have multiple contributingfactors. As a quick example, an employee might slip in a poorly lit area, on slippery flooring, while wearing low-traction shoes.
Here’s a short list of some of the most common contributing factors for slips, trips, and falls on commercial properties:
- Low-traction flooring
- Damaged or loose flooring
- Poor lighting
- Clutter/wires in walkways
- Low-traction footwear
- Unsafe behavior
- Spills on hard floors
- Wet cleaning products
- Improper use of cleaning products
- Lack of signage
Some of these issues are building maintenance issues. Others are the responsibility of employees or customers. But some of these concerns are handled by janitorial service providers.
Cleaners are responsible for attending to spills, for choosing and applying the appropriate cleaning products, and for posting signs alerting to slippery areas. If your cleaning team mishandles any of these responsibilities, the risk of an onsite fall at your facility will increase dramatically.
How Janitorial Services Can Help
There are a number of basic steps that janitorial services can take to reduce the risk of falls in the buildings they clean. Onsitecleaners can respond as quickly as possible to spills and promptly post signs when surfaces are slippery. While cleaning, they can also check for additional hazards, like clutter, damaged floors, and loose steps.
These steps are common sense, more or less, but that doesn’t mean all cleaners take them seriously. Janitorial services staffed by responsive, responsible, and detail-oriented cleaners will do a much better job of preventing onsite falls.
Beyond these common-sense solutions, trustworthy janitorial services set themselves apart in other ways. The best cleaning companies equip their cleaners with the right products and equipment, and they take steps to ensure that cleaners use the right cleaning techniques.
Let’s examine these three areas a little closer to see how they help prevent slips, trips, and falls.
- Cleaning Products. The wrong cleaning product can significantly increase slipping risks. Some products leave slick residues. Some take a long time to dry. Some interact poorly with certain types of flooring. Your cleaners should be using products that minimize these issues.
- Cleaning Equipment. The best janitorial services use microfiber mops when cleaning hard floors. Microfiber requires much less water and cleaning product than traditional mop materials, which reduces slipping risks. Even better, microfiber is proven to clean hard floors more effectively.
- CleaningTechniques. The right cleaning techniques can further reduce the amount of water and cleaning product used to clean floors. This reduces drying times and slippery residues. It’s also more economically and environmentally responsible.
Another thing that sets the best janitorial services apart is how they plan their cleaning services. Cut-rate providers tend to rely on cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all cleaning plans. High-quality cleaning companies take the opposite approach, carefully customizing their cleaning plans to fit each clients’ needs.
When developing your facility’s cleaning plan, a qualified cleaning company will take steps to safeguard against slips, trips, and falls. Your cleaning plan should account for different types of flooring in your facility, what kind of foot traffic these floors are exposed to, and which areas have the highest risk of slips, trips, and falls. Cleaning protocols can then be shaped around this data, minimizing the risk of falls within your facility.
Call JAN-PRO® at 866-355-1064to request a FREE janitorial services estimate and learn more about how they prevent slips, trips, and falls.