A Guide On Occupational Health & Safety for Commercial Floor Cleaning

In order to ensure the safety of your employees, clients, and customers, it is important to ensure the floors of your commercial space are clean, dry, and in good condition to prevent accidental slips, trips, and falls. Even with little traffic passing through your business on a daily basis, the cleanliness of your floors is essential to guarantee safety. 

Maintaining a clean, dry, and debris-free floor will help make your space a safe place to work and visit. Unfortunately, employers and staff are not always adequately trained to get the job done according to mandated safety standards. Commercial cleaning companies, on the other hand, are qualified to inspect and clean floors to comply with regulations. 

While regular cleaning can be done with your in-house staff, it’s a good idea to bring in qualified professionals to identify hazards and oversee the cleanliness of your floors. Read on to discover tips to help you maintain clean, safe floors in your workplace.

Best Practices for Health and Safety in Cleaning 

It doesn’t take much in the way of floor spills or messes to create an unsafe surface. It’s important to ensure that you and your employees know when to break out the floor scrubber or vacuum and what to look for when it comes to floor safety hazards.

Debris

Any rubbish, dirt, or large objects that are left on the floor can present a safety risk to anyone who passes through the area. Consider your day-to-day operations and review your work floor on a regular basis throughout the day to make sure you’re aware of anything that might cause a hazard. 

If you regularly receive shipments in a particular area and notice that paper shavings accumulate after packing things away, or your entryway tends to gather more dust and dirt than the rest of your floor, it’s a good idea to patrol specific regions of the building in order to stay on top of area-specific risk factors. 

Moisture

Slippery surfaces are one of the biggest dangers, and when floors get wet or slick, it increases the likelihood that someone may slip and fall. Moisture can accumulate on floors in a variety of ways, including spilled drinks, moisture tracked indoors from outside, oil-based substances, and leaks. 

Wet floors should be addressed as soon as possible to prevent potential accidents. If the moisture cannot be wiped up immediately, it’s important that you use proper signage or barriers to prevent traffic in the area. Because spills and wet spots can happen at any moment and on any day, it’s wise to keep absorbent materials and supplies on hand nearby to address moisture as quickly as possible. 

Make sure the areas are not only properly dried, but are properly cleaned, too, so any sticky substances are wiped up and the commercial floor cleaners have an easier time coming through with their floor polishers at the end of the day. 

Obstacles

Even the best floor cleaning services cannot properly address all of the floor messes and other hazards in your space if those hazards come in the form of physical obstacles. Merchandise or boxes piled up in walkways, rugs turned askew, and rubbish or fallen objects on the ground can all get in the way of foot traffic and result in unnecessary stumbles and trips. 

Make a point to keep all pathways clear and open for traffic to flow both ways, and designate particular areas for storage. As part of your daily operations, make rounds to ensure walkways are clear and free from obstructions.

Why Hire a Professional Cleaning Service for Your Business

Though you and your employees may do an excellent job at keeping your floors clean and hazard-free, commercial floor cleaning companies possess the expertise to inspect and clean floors to eliminate current hazards you may have missed as well as prevent future problems from developing. 

As well, a professional service can provide tried-and-true commercial floor & machine cleaning tips to you and your staff to better guarantee a safe and secure work floor for everyone in the building. 

Even periodic or scheduled weekly services can do a lot to make certain that your floors are as clean and safe as they can be by using professional-grade products, tools such as a commercial floor scrubber and spill kits, and knowledge and training to tackle a variety of floor safety concerns so your place of business can remain in good, reliable shape.