Slips and trips are a major occupational health and safety concern due to their high rate of occurrence in the workplace. Common causes include factors related to poor floor surfaces, contamination, the environment, footwear and people.
Figures vary according to the jurisdiction in Australia, but a commonly quoted figure is that ‘slip and trip’ accidents are responsible for between a quarter and a third of all workplace injuries.
You and your staff need to take steps to reduce the risk of slips and trips in your workplace to avoid:
- financial costs for you as the employer
- financial, physical and emotional costs for the injured worker and their families
- the potential costs of a public liability claim if a visitor to the workplace is injured.
If you are planning to implement sound risk management procedures in your business to help you prevent slips and trips in your workplace, OHS regulations require that controls or solutions be applied in a particular way, with the priority being to consider workplace design or engineering controls to eliminate or manage risks.
What to do
There is plenty of scope for designing and maintaining your workplace environment in a way that will eliminate or reduce the chance of having someone slip, trip or fall.
Risk identification
To assist in determining exactly where slips and trips have happened, or are likely to happen, there are three steps:
1. Consult with employees
In every State in Australia, you have a legal obligation to consult your employees when going through this process.
Common risk control measures – whether they are processes, procedures or actions for eliminating or reducing risk – should be developed and implemented with the help of your employees. During consultation, attention should be given to hazard identification and risk controls in unfamiliar locations eg when your employees work offsite or at a client’s home or office.
2. Inspect the premises
Conduct a workplace inspection and look for slip and trip hazards, such as uneven flooring, cords/cables across walkways, or areas that are slippery. Also inspect outdoor areas. Document the hazards identified on the risk management register.
Ask your employees for assistance when conducting the inspection, as they will know any potential risks from their experiences doing workplace tasks. Helpful information will be in records of previous risk assessments. Pay attention to:
- floors and grounds
- housekeeping and cleanliness
- cleaning and maintenance methods
- lighting
- stairs, ramps and sloping surfaces
- walkways
- tasks being undertaken
- footwear.
Identify hazards by examining the premises, the work and high-risk areas. That is:
- where floors can become contaminated by liquids such as oil or water and by dry materials eg plastic bags, flour dust
- where external grounds become slippery or uneven
- sloping surfaces
- work areas where lifting and carrying tasks (and some other manual handling tasks such as pushing and pulling) are performed
- any area where the pace of work causes people to walk quickly or run
- high pedestrian traffic areas
- where there are constant changes to workplace conditions such as building sites
- unfamiliar locations such as patient or client home
- accident locations that have not been secured and cleaned up.
3. Check records
These include incident and injury reports, near-miss reports, workers compensation claims and workplace inspection checklists.
Risk assessment
Once the hazard is identified, assess the risk by working out the likelihood of an incident occurring and the level of harm that could result. Provide detailed evidence about what contributes to trips, slips and falls. There is not likely to be a single cause for a slip, trip or fall, and each cause needs to be assessed.
Use your risk assessments to help you set a priority for the elimination of hazards. For example, the provision of slip-resistant footwear alone is not sufficient protection from smooth surfaces covered in oil or grease – the first priority should be to avoid the spills.
Eliminating or controlling risks
Use the risk assessment, in consultation with your employees, to determine the best means of eliminating or controlling the risk. Document this information and any conclusions in a risk control plan or risk register.
When forming controls or solutions, give priority to design or engineering controls that eliminate risk. Make sure you have a system for promptly reporting and dealing with equipment faults. After you eliminate or control the risk of slips and trips, it is important to monitor and review each hazard.
Case study – how not to do it
The following case study is more of an example of how not to do it – a company ended up in court after failing to keep its premises uncluttered which contributed to a courier being injured.
‘Clutter and congestion’ contributed to fall
A self-employed courier was awarded $164,000 after he fell from a raised loading dock. The NSW District Court ruled that Toll Transport had negligently failed to widen the loading dock, and at least keep it clear.
The Court had heard that parcels would frequently fall from a conveyor belt onto the loading dock, requiring workers to come close to the edge of the dock when they were negotiating the fallen parcels.
‘... a narrow, elevated and often cluttered space was prone to the kind of accident that occurred,’ the District Court ruled.
The NSW Court of Appeal unanimously rejected an appeal of the decision by Toll, agreeing that the degree of ‘clutter and congestion’, together with the narrow space, contributed to the courier’s fall.
‘When someone slips in a narrow congested area close to a 1.3 to 1.4 metre drop, the responsibility (is that) of the party in control of the premises (and) who is able to either remove the clutter or widen the area (can be seen),’ the Judges agreed.
‘... there was a narrow, cluttered elevated space upon which people had to work. A widening of the area would have reduced the risk of being near the edge. A clearing of the clutter would have reduced the risk of needing to, as the judge found, negotiate parcels and thereby come closer to the edge.'
‘In all likelihood and on the probabilities, taking either or both the steps identified by his Honour would have meant the injury, as it occurred, would not have occurred.’
Toll Transport Pty Ltd v Haskins [2008] NSWCA 244 (15 September 2008)
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