Identify and Eliminate Causes of Slips, Trips, and Falls

The Montana State Fund has identified five contributing factors for slips, trips, and falls:

• Surface design. Slip resistance can have an important impact on preventing slips and falls. Slip resistance is measured by it static coefficient of friction (COF). OSHA recommends that walking surfaces have a COF of 0.5 for activities like walking on ramps, pushing, pulling, or carrying objects.

• Surface conditions. Conditions vary depending on the environment and surface maintenance. Wet walkways present a serious risk, as do loose or torn carpeting, broken tiles, or curled edges on mats.

• Surface and level changes. About 60 to 70 percent of slip, trip, and fall injuries occur on level walking surfaces. Walkers must adjust their gait every time a surface changes—for example, from tile  to carpet or from one type of carpet to another. The goal is to minimize these transitions.

• Obstructions. Examples of hazardous obstructions include extension cords, furniture, scrap materials, and pallets. Good housekeeping and organizational strategies can eliminate obstruction-related falls.

• Human factors. Age, physical impairments, gait, fatigue, inattention, and the general way people interact all play a role in slips, trips, and falls.

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Whatever safety meeting you need, chances are you’ll find it prewritten and ready to use in BLR’s Safety Meetings Library on CD. Try it at no cost or risk. Here’s how.

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Good Housekeeping a Must

Your slips, trips, and falls prevention playbook should include a variety of approaches, but it must include meticulous housekeeping. For example, employees and maintenance personnel should be required to:

• Clean up all spills immediately.
• Plainly mark spills and wet areas before they are cleaned up or dry up.
• Sweep or mop debris from floors.
• Remove obstacles from walkways and keep them free of clutter.
• Secure mats, rugs, and carpets that do not lie flat.
• Close all file cabinets and storage drawers consistently.
• Cover cables that are place over walkways.
• Keep working and walking areas well lighted.

Maintenance policies and practices, proper flooring, appropriate footwear, and awareness training for employees are other important pieces in preventing slips, trips, and falls.

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We challenge you to NOT find a safety meeting you need, already prewritten, in BLR’s Safety Meetings Library. Take up our challenge at no cost or risk. Get the details.

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Don’t Slip Up on STF Training

BLR’s Safety Meetings Library provides the perfect materials for conducting frequent and engaging training on a broad range of safety and health issues. This cost-effective resource provides the safety meeting content, as well as supporting handouts, quizzes, posters, and safety slogans.

All told, the CD provides you with more than 400 ready-to-train meetings on more than 100 key safety topics—a shrewd investment in this time of tight safety budgets. In addition to the meetings’ supplemental quizzes and handouts, you also get relevant regulations (OSHA’s CFR 29), a listing of the most common safety violations cited by OSHA, and case studies of actual OSHA cases and their outcomes.

Safety Meetings Library lets you choose from a variety of training approaches, including:

• Mandatory—Sessions that are OSHA-required
• Comprehensive—Sessions with broadest coverage of a topic
• 7-Minute—Short, simple, targeted sessions to fit tight schedules
• Initial—A session used as introductory training on a topic
• Refresher—Sessions that follow up on or reinforce previous training
• Tool Box Talk—More informal reinforcement of a topic
• PowerPoint®—Graphic presentations for comprehensive initial or refresher training
• Hands-on—A session in which there are training activities
• Spanish—Including Spanish language handouts and quizzes coordinated with English sessions

You can get a preview of the program by using the links below. But for the best look, we suggest a no-cost, no-obligation trial. Just let us know and we’ll arrange it for you.