Fall Protection An Ongoing Conversation
How can employers develop a comprehensive training program and instilling a safety culture to prevent slips and falls?
- By Michael Schulte
- Sep 06, 2023
Preventing slips and falls is a high priority across industries because they are both dangerous and preventable. In 2020, according to the National Safety Council, 805 workers died from falls. In addition, more than 210,000 were injured so badly that they were forced to take time off from work. These injuries are expensive, costing the nation billions in medical expenses, workers’ compensation, and litigation.
On the other hand, safe conditions are good for productivity. When employees can plant their feet on the floor – without worrying they might start skating across it – they can move more confidently and focus on their jobs.
In a perfect world, companies could set up a single, two-hour training program that would educate their employees and new hires about safety. While these safety seminars are certainly valuable, they don’t get the job done on their own. Without daily reinforcement, training is often forgotten in the hustle of our daily work.
Safety must be part of the ongoing conversation and fully enmeshed in company culture to maximize slip and fall prevention and other protective measures. Safe environments don’t just happen – they must be engineered. That means everyone from the shop floor to the C-suite needs to take an active role and ensure the safety conversation never stops.
At our company, we manufacture specialized safety flooring products and surface technologies, covering walkways, entryways, stairs, and ladders where people live, work and play. As a result, safety is part of our DNA and every bit as important in our own facilities as it is in the places we service.
Safeopedia reports that 66 percent of falls occur on the same level due to a slip or trip, so installing the right non-slip flooring is a key step to pre-engineering a safe environment. Managers can then take a holistic approach to slip and fall prevention by considering the many elements that can cause accidents, such as workplace clutter, wet and/or greasy surfaces, and poor situational awareness, to design a safety program that works for their organization using the following practices.
Make Safety More Meaningful
This article originally appeared in the September 2023 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.