SLIPS, TRIPS & FALLS
AVOID A COSTLY SLIP UP
Slips are the biggest cause of accident and injury cost in the UK so it’s imperative that they aren’t dealt with superficially. Christian Harris, Founder of Slip Safety Services, explains.
Year after year, slips cause the most accidents, the most injuries, the greatest number of insurance claims and the highest proportion of costs in many sectors.
Our partner on slip safety, AXA Insurance spends £80m a year on slip claims alone without considering trips and falls too. This hard data suggests that the overall spend on insured costs alone is over £1bn a year – far greater than previously published estimates.
Let’s not forget, though, that accidents have uninsured costs too. HSE estimates this is between 10 to 12 times the insured cost. Data from our own research of H&S managers on LinkedIn suggests 10-12 times. So, a £10,000 claim might actually cost in excess of £100,000 in total.
The human costs are staggering too. Over 300,000 people a year go to A&E after a slip resulting in more than 1.5m NHS bed days. Shockingly, 95% of serious slips cause broken bones and every year around 12 people suffer amputations.
Despite the unquestionable data, people still don’t take this seriously enough. We all say that safety is our number one priority but actions speak louder than words. Slips are not inevitable but we often act as if they are.
Why do companies get this so wrong? Attitudes and resultant H&S policies and procedures are, in my experience, too superficial. Typical problems include:
Underestimating the issue. If you divide 300,000 serious slips a year by the number of buildings in the UK, the average building has many fewer than one accident. Yet, many companies feel they don’t have a serious problem with multiple slips per month.
Grouping of slips, trips and falls. If you have a trip issue, it’s pretty easy to solve. Slips are a much more complex, scientific subject. By grouping them
36
together we encourage the view that these are simple matters.
Relying on only one control measure and in insufficient depth. Many buildings have been shocked to find that their textured floor is slippery-when-wet. Just because it looks anti-slip doesn’t mean it is – you need to verify this.
CHIMES: THE SIX SOURCES OF SLIPS We’ve developed a framework to help you get into
sufficient detail to really make a difference. To give you an idea, clients implementing this framework have seen results such as a 75% reduction in claims costs in a national gym provider, which has poolsides and other constantly wet areas where one might assume slips are ‘inevitable’, and a 60% reduction in accidents in a London train station.
To understand and manage slip safety properly, you need to tune your CHIMES.
C – CONTAMINATION A truly clean, perfectly dry floor is safe. So, to what
extent is contamination present on your floor? What is that contamination and how can you either eliminate it or manage it, through cleaning for example, to sufficiently reduce the risk?
Certain floor types can withstand more contamination than others: a textured floor surface might be slip resistant even when wet, yet a smooth floor is likely to present a high risk even with a few drops of liquid.
H – HEEL For there to be a slip, a heel must strike a floor. Where it
is possible to control footwear, you can reduce accidents significantly. However, this is only controllable among your staff. In a restaurant, footwear could be a fantastic control measure back-of-house, but it’s impossible to control what customers wear on their feet.
www.tomorrowshs.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
