On particularly cold winter days when I was a kid, my mother would often give me a choice regarding outerwear, “Either wear your winter coat or don’t go outside,” she would say, effectively offering me a Hobson’s Choice - no choice at all. Since I was just a seven-year-old kid, my mom wasn’t interested in empowering me or helping me to build my decision-making skills. She simply wanted me to be warm and not get sick. There are many companies that offer this same “no choice” when it comes to safety items – either comply with OSHA workplace safety or go home.

I was speaking with a corporate safety director the other day about the challenges his workforce faces with employee buy-ins and working in the ice and snow. He has used our ice cleats in the past with good success. Recently, his company started a new safety initiative: ZERO winter slip, trip and fall incidents. This can be hard goal to reach (but not impossible). After our discussion, he realized that just buying winter traction aids and making them available to everyone was good, but not good enough to achieve his goal. Things needed to change.

The other day I was downtown for an important meeting. On my way into the city, the skies began to grow dark and by the time I pulled into the parking lot, the heavens had opened up and were dumping buckets of water all around me. From inside my car, I could see that some enterprising young fellow had opened up a makeshift umbrella sales stand on the corner. Not wanting to arrive to my appointment soaking wet, I parked my car, made a mad dash to his stand and gladly forked over the $20 for the small black parasol.

Every safety manager’s nightmare may include some winter weather. And it’s no wonder – we all know that slips and falls can do serious damage to a perfect safety record. Now, I’m sure you’re well aware that reducing winter slip and fall incidents starts with increasing traction. And increasing traction on snow and ice is easy -- just about any cleated or spiked item that you can find will do the job, right? True. But the difficult task is to increase traction while allowing employees to do their jobs with minimal interference. After all, what good is traction footwear if it won’t allow you do […]