You have invested time, resources and most likely considerable expense in sourcing and fitting exactly the kind of flooring you need, it is safe, hardwearing and all set to serve you and your premises long into the future.
Now take a moment to think about how you clean those floors, the methods you apply and the products you use.
We ask that for one very good reason… Poor cleaning can render it all useless.
What do we mean by poor cleaning? It can mean several things, firstly the time of day that your floors are cleaned. If that cleaning happens early in the day, are the floors still wet when they see most use? Could that cleaning be done after the working day, or by zone, to lower the risk of slips and falls?
Additionally is your cleaning product suitable? All too often we see detergents that satisfy COSHH regulations on other surfaces, such as those in food production areas, being commandeered for use on floors. It might make the floors look clean, but from a safety point of view, there is a lot more to it than that…
Another vital aspect of effective cleaning is the equipment used. A mop and bucket are often still the primary tools for the task yet so often they can help create a greater slip risk. Detergent must be left on a surface for sufficient time to dissolve surface grease and should be moved away with water that is at the right temperature. Use of a mop and bucket generally doesn’t encourage this effective method and can easily leave a hazardous layer of soap as well as grease on the floor, increasing instead of reducing the slip risk after cleaning. It can easily cost you more to employ a poor cleaning method (through labour costs and detergent volumes used) than to operate a ‘best practice’ method, and that’s before the cost of any slips claims…
Ensure you are maximising your investment in flooring. Get in touch today to learn more about how we can help you reduce the risk of slips and falls through onsite slip resistance testing, cleaning methods design and specialist cleaning products.
