A safe store starts from the ground up. It starts with every employee utilizing smart and safe floor cleaning habits. Today, floor care has become a science, one that is constantly evolving. To help you stay current, here are some new tools, tips and techniques you can share with your store’s team to make floor safety a priority – and help reduce your long-term insurance costs.
How to keep your floors safe and sweep away the claims:
- Replace mop heads every few days. They wear out quickly, and once they are oily, a standard mop will stay oily…no matter how much you try to clean it.
- Utilize new oil releasing mops. These mops are treated to release oil in the mop bucket. A standard mop head absorbs the oil, and after the first time mopping, the head already becomes less effective. Oil releasing heads are not typically the standard, so be sure to request a oil releasing mop from your vendors.
- Kick the old bucket. Standard mop buckets ring the dirty water into the same area – so you continue cleaning the floor with dirty water! Try new mop buckets that either have a drop in insert, which prevents the dirty water from going over the clean water side, or mop buckets with two chambers. Your mops will last longer, rinse out better and be more effective.
- Always rinse floors with clear, warm water after mopping or deck brushing.
- Follow your mop heads’ specific replacement and cleaning instructions. When you do not replace them on schedule, their effectiveness dramatically goes down.
- Dry mopping helps to reduce floor drying time to less than one minute. This should be standard procedure in every store.
- Consider using an approved floor treatment to help reduce slips and falls. Floor treatments help to increase the coefficient of friction of the floor by coating the floor tile with a long lasting material. Floor treatment or not, it is still important to properly clean your floors to reduce slippery build up.
- Be sure to deck brush daily to prevent buildup and slippery floors. Standard deck brushes are difficult to use as they require strength and stamina. It’s best to use weighted deck brushes (the Heavy Weight), or automated scrubbers (Ecolab Scrub N Go). If a standard deck brush is used, it is recommend scrubbing in 6’ squares, by several people for superior results.
Remember to stick to the floor care basics, stay consistent, and always be safe.
For more floor safety ideas, tools and demonstrations, just click below:
Weighted Deck Brush
Dual Chamber Mop Bucket
Process on Cleaning a Floor
Dry Mopping
The Meaning of Dirty Mop Water
Floor Tile Treatment