The winter season is now behind us. Time for a top 6 list... Too expensive. My employees won’t wear them. Can’t wear indoors. Can’t drive with them on. Employees won’t take care of them. We've tried everything and nothing works in my environment.

The process for selecting ice cleats and traction aids to help reduce slip and fall incidents in ice and snow can be very frustrating, time consuming, confusing, annoying... and well, you get the point. The following tips can help you avoid the stress involved when searching for the best and safest traction aid options for your employees working outdoors.

Back in 2010, if you were to type the term “ice cleats” into Google, you would find roughly 18,000 results. (Trust me; I’ve done that search plenty over the years.) Try the same search in 2018 and you will find over 1,600,000 results! So what does this tell you? For one thing, ice cleats are far more popular and more prevalent in today’s world than they were just four or five years ago. I would make the simple argument that the marketplace would not have expanded so quickly if ice cleats did not work. But of course your question, “do ice cleats even work?” cannot be answered quite that simply.

Most ice cleats are NOT safe to wear indoors. Traditional ice cleats are engineered for one thing and one thing only - preventing slip and fall incidents on ice. That’s it. Since, obviously, Ice and snow don’t exist indoors, manufacturers don’t concentrate on indoor flooring materials when developing ice cleats to prevent slips and falls. This can severely complicate a company’s goal of reducing slip and fall incidents because, if traditional ice cleats are worn indoors, your employees are now at a high risk of causing a slip hazard.

If you’re a safety professional , I have an important question for you "What is your biggest safety sin or workplace hazard?" Before I tell you mine, I’ll give you some background. Winter Walking is North America’s largest manufacturer of traction aid ice cleats. We help hundreds of companies and thousands of employees reduce the chance of suffering a slip and fall injury while on the job. We take tremendous pride in our product line, our company and our task. So imagine how embarrassed I would be if I personally suffered a slip and fall injury on ice or snow? Embarrassed is an understatement […]

From time to time, we like to revisit some of our most popular blog entries. If safety professionals are looking for specific information, we’re always happy to provide it. And one of our most popular topics focused on the lack of regulations when it comes to ice cleats. In my original article, “Why Are There No Regulations Around Ice Cleats?” I wrote that the main reason for a lack of industry standards or regulations around ice cleats is the number of variables in recreating an outdoor slippery surface. But I don’t think that my post was popular because people wanted to hear why these regula[…]