Slips, Trips & Falls Prevention Procedure template

2. Roles and responsibilities

• [Name/role]: owns this procedure, the inspection schedule, incident trends, and the fixes that need money — matting, drainage, lighting, resurfacing.
• Managers and supervisors: run the floor walks on their shifts, enforce the footwear rules, and close out reported hazards or escalate them the same day.
• All staff: clean or guard what they can immediately, report what they cannot, and keep their own areas to the housekeeping standard.
• [Maintenance/contractor]: repairs reported surface defects within [timeframe by severity] and keeps exterior routes walkable in weather.

3. Walking-working surface standards

• Floors kept clean, orderly, and — wherever the work allows — dry, per OSHA's walking-working surfaces rules; wet processes get drainage, matting, or dry standing places.
• Walkways and aisles kept clear to their full width: no stock, deliveries, cords, or equipment parked in them, even briefly — "just for a minute" is how most trip hazards start.
• Cords and hoses routed away from walkways; where a crossing is unavoidable, covered with a cord protector, never taped as a permanent answer.
• Stairs: treads sound, nosings visible, handrails secure, lighting working, and nothing stored on them — ever.
• Mats and runners: flat, gripping the floor, edges intact; a curled mat is a trip hazard wearing a safety costume, and gets replaced, not flipped.
• Exterior routes: parking areas and entrances lit, potholes and lifted slabs reported and marked, and ice and snow treated per the [winter plan] before opening.
• Surface defects (broken tiles, lifted edges, worn treads) reported to [system/name] and guarded or cordoned until repaired.

4. Spill response

1. 1Whoever sees a spill owns it until it is dealt with — guard it first, clean it second, and never walk away to find someone else without leaving the spot guarded.
2. 2Stand at or mark the spill immediately and warn people approaching it; a colleague fetches the spill kit and wet-floor signs from [locations].
3. 3Place wet-floor signs at every approach to the spill, not just on top of it.
4. 4Clean with the right method for the substance: [absorbent for oils and grease, detergent then rinse for food spills, per the spill matrix at [location]] — a smeared spill is often slicker than the original.
5. 5Dry the floor completely; a clean wet floor is still a wet floor. Leave signs in place until it is dry, then remove them promptly — signs that stand over dry floor all day teach everyone to ignore signs.
6. 6Report the spill in [log/system]: what, where, when, and cause. Repeat spills in the same spot are an engineering problem — a leaking machine, a bad pour spout, missing matting — and go to [name/role] for a fix at the source.

5. Housekeeping routine

1. 1Walk your area at shift start: floors, walkways, and stairs clear and dry, mats flat, lighting working — fix or report before the shift gets busy.
2. 2Clean as you go through the shift: packaging to the baler or bin immediately, deliveries put away on arrival rather than staged in aisles, cords re-routed the moment they appear.
3. 3Run scheduled floor cleaning at [times] using the posted method for each floor type, with wet-floor signs out for the full wet period — and where possible, clean sections in sequence so a dry path always exists.
4. 4Sweep or spot-clean high-risk zones at [frequency]: entrances in wet weather, the ice machine and drink stations, fryer and dish areas, produce sections, loading doors.
5. 5Complete the closing walk: floors clean and drying, aisles clear for the morning, nothing left on stairs, exterior lights on.
6. 6Sign the housekeeping checklist each shift at [location/system] — the signature is what turns "we usually do it" into evidence.

6. Footwear

• Staff in [kitchen, dish, stockroom, and other listed areas] wear slip-resistant footwear meeting [standard/spec], per the footwear policy; {{org.name}} [provides them / contributes [amount] / operates a purchase program].
• All staff wear closed, flat, secure footwear with soles in serviceable condition — worn-smooth soles are checked at [frequency] and replaced, because tread is the part of the shoe doing the safety work.
• Managers check footwear as part of the shift standard, the same way they check uniform.

7. Reporting, records, and review

Every slip, trip, or fall — staff or customer, injury or near miss — is reported per the injury reporting procedure and logged the same day, with the surface condition, footwear, lighting, and cause recorded while memories are fresh. Near misses are the cheap data: the stumble nobody was hurt by today is the claim you prevent tomorrow.

Inspection sheets, housekeeping sign-offs, spill logs, and incident reports are kept at [system/location] for [period]. [Name/role] reviews trends [frequency] — repeat locations, repeat causes, repeat times of day — and this procedure is reviewed [frequency, e.g. annually] and after any fall injury. Owner: [name/role]. Next review due: [date].