Safe Work Practices

Workplace safety is concerned with preventing injury and illness to employees in the workplace. To make the workplace safer, the employer has to acknowledge which potential health hazards are present, or determine where, what, and how a worker is likely to become injured or ill. As a result, many best practices for safety in the workplace have been identified. The following are ways to minimize slips, trips, and falls in the workplace:

• Design the workplace and work processes to prevent potential exposures to slip and trip hazards.
• Maintain good housekeeping, including clear, tidy work areas free of clutter.
• Follow safe walking practices and routes.
• Wear proper footwear with good traction. These shoes should have nonskid soles and flat heels.
• Learn to fall "properly." This includes keeping your head up, rounding your back, not locking joints, and extending your arms.
• Physically contain work processes to prevent discharge, splatter, or spillage of liquids, oils, particles, dusts, and offal onto the floor.

Here are some additional safety tips to prevent slips, trips, and falls:

• Place enclosures around hazardous areas.
• Use drip trays to contain leaks of lubricant onto floors from machinery.
• Perform regularly scheduled equipment maintenance and work area inspections.
• Use adequate ventilation to avoid smoke, steam, and condensation of water and grease onto the floor.
• Provide adequate lighting to keep work areas, aisles, and paths of travel well lit.
• Mark step edges and transition areas to indicate changes in elevations.
• Use anti-skid paint, slip-resistant coatings, and strips.
• Make sure stairs have sufficient lighting and hand rails.
• Provide effective drainage, false floors, or work platforms.
• Install slip-resistant floors in high risk areas.

To learn more about Walking Working Surfaces visit our Walking Working Surfaces & Personal Fall Protection Systems Online Training web page.