Restaurant Floor Safety Tips: Slip-and-Fall Edition
How bad have slip-and-fall accidents become in the U.S. workplace? According to the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety & Health Administration , falling, tripping, and slipping are responsible for the second most general industry fatalities in the workplace (the first is motor vehicles). That's why it's so important that your restaurant has a thorough and safe cleaning procedure in place. With that in mind, here are four restaurant floor safety tips to consider.
1. Put the Mop Away
The biggest mistake in floor cleaning may be the most common: using a mop. An astounding three million restaurant workers have slip or fall related accidents each year, but you can dramatically reduce the likelihood of these accidents by throwing out that old mop and bucket. Instead of cutting through grease and removing food particles, mops just swish the mess around, creating a slimy, slippery floor. On top of this, mopping with chemical solutions leaves a residue on the floor. Business owners often spend hundreds of dollars just to have the buildup from cleaning products removed several times a year.
2. Focus on Soil Removal
To improve restaurant floor safety, your cleaning crew's priority should be getting the food particles, dirt, and grease off all surfaces using vacuum extraction. Dispense-and-vac cleaning systems by Kaivac specialize in removing these layers of grime off floors so that staff can go about their duties in safety.
3. Lighten the Chemical Load
Using too much chemical cleaner and sudsy soap leaves chemical residues on floors, so this approach to floor cleaning is off the mark, and is actually counterproductive. Your team has enough to worry about as they clean, so why add too much chemical content into the mix? Tests performed using Kaivac cleaning systems have shown that using water without cleaning agents such as soap or disinfectant can leave your floors cleaner than when using chemical products.
4. Fast-Drying Cleaning Methods
Even with a clean floor, chances of slip-and-fall accidents increase when it takes a long time for the surface to dry. Factor in the entire cleaning cycle before you settle on the best system for your place of business. Dispense-and-vac cleaning systems remove virtually ass of the liquid content from the floor, which increases drying times dramatically.
Restaurant floor cleaning is only effective when the method used removes the source of the problem (food, water, grease, and grime) without creating new ones.
To learn more about floor safety, click here.
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