maintenance matters Floor Safety Can Help Grow Business Is your operation proactive or reactive when it comes to floor safety? By: Michael Fraley T Those who make their living in the janito-rial industry have come to realize that this business is full of competition just waiting to offer the next big thing. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to go to a show such as ISSA/INTERCLEAN, you know there is no shortage of companies out there soliciting for your business. Sadly — especially with this economy — everyone seems to be looking for a deal. This sometimes means that, even with our most loyal customers, we find ourselves having to lower prices or increase services just to keep ahead of the competition. On top of all this, we are faced with con-sistently rising chemical prices. you could prove that you or your company is not negligent or even responsible. As a walkway auditor and a floor safety consultant, I often see companies included in slip and fall lawsuits — and they have nothing with which to defend themselves. As mentioned earlier, documentation is vital if you, your company or your organiza-tion is going to survive a lawsuit. One such way to show documentation is to have in place a written floor safety program. Another key, on top of you and your employer, is for the company that contracts you to do the cleaning to have a floor safety program as well. Included with any program is the need to document regular walkway audits, which should be performed by a well-qualified auditor. Such an individual can be found at www. NFSI.org, the website of the National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI). The NFSI has a list of Certified Walkway Auditors that can assist you in this process. Even though it seems like an added expense in an already tight economy, any expenditure will prove minimal compared to what an actual slip and fall lawsuit could cost you in higher insurance premiums and the possible loss of your job or a good contract. Another Problem About Which To Worry As if you didn’t have enough to worry about in this business, now you have to deal with the threat of litigation in the event that a slip, trip or fall occurs on one of the properties you maintain. It seems that, even though slips and falls have always been an issue for the prop-erty owner or proprietor, it never directly impacted the service provider. Oh, how things have changed; increas-ingly, when a slip and fall incident occurs, the attorney for the victim includes every-one in the lawsuit, even down to the clean-ing contractor. So, this means more liability for you and the need to take into consideration that this could very well happen. While there’s no one answer to protect yourself against a lawsuit, there are steps you can take to limit your exposure. One such way is documentation in the sense that, if a person was to slip and fall, Utilizing the proper tools, chemicals and equipment can improve your clean-ing efforts, result-ing in cleaner, less slippery floors. Image courtesy of Unger Enterprises Inc. 46 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • September 2011
CMM – Archives Sept 2011: 46
