The Problem: Why Slips Happen on Floors That Look Clean
Across multi-location organizations, slip complaints and incidents often occur even when floors appear clean and established procedures are being followed.
This can be frustrating for teams responsible for operations, safety, facilities, risk, or claims—especially when training, signage, and housekeeping standards are already in place.
In many cases, the issue is not compliance or behavior.
It’s how the floor surface performs when wet.
Clean Does Not Always Mean High Traction
A floor can look clean, be regularly maintained, and still perform poorly under wet conditions.
Over time, many factors can reduce a floor’s natural traction:
Foot traffic and wear
Cleaning chemistry
Polishing and burnishing
Normal surface aging
These changes are often subtle and not visually obvious, but they affect how the surface behaves when moisture is present.
As a result, organizations may experience recurring issues even when teams are doing everything they’re supposed to do.
Why Current Responses Often Fall Short
When slippery floor complaints or incidents arise, organizations are often left with limited or undesirable options:
Re-emphasizing training or procedures
Increasing signage or warnings
Applying coatings or films
Replacing the floor entirely
Each of these approaches has tradeoffs. Some are administrative rather than physical controls. Others introduce operational disruption, appearance changes, or capital expense.
What’s often missing from the conversation is the condition of the floor surface itself.
A Common Blind Spot: Surface Performance
In many environments, floor traction is assumed rather than evaluated.
Because changes in traction are gradual and not always visible, surface performance can decline without triggering attention—until complaints or incidents begin to repeat.
This creates a disconnect:
Floors appear clean
Procedures are followed
Yet issues persist
Without addressing surface performance, organizations may cycle through the same responses without resolving the underlying condition.
Why This Matters for Multi-Location Organizations
For organizations managing multiple sites, this issue can scale quickly:
Similar floor types across locations
Similar cleaning programs
Similar patterns repeating at different sites
Without a practical way to address surface performance on existing floors, teams are often forced to choose between living with recurring issues or pursuing disruptive solutions.
What’s Possible?
Many organizations are surprised to learn that, in some cases, wet-floor traction on existing tile can be improved without coatings, films, or floor replacement.
Understanding the role of surface performance is often the first step toward evaluating whether alternative options make sense for specific locations.
From here, the next question becomes:
What options exist—and where do they fit?