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Benefits of Commercial Kitchen Floor Mats
Matting or installation of commercial kitchen floor mats is one practice that different industries today have come to prioritize. Trades that include docks, factories, hubs, and workspaces that are constantly wet will greatly benefit from matting. One such industry that has embraced the science of utilizing floor mats as a versatile protective gear in their work environments is the food and beverage industry.
The food and beverage industry is a lucrative business. From small restaurants up to large-operation food and beverage manufacturing, businesses dealing with food share a good market consistently. After all, food is man’s basic necessity. As the demand for food and beverage products consistently grows, more and more people are enticed to work in this industry. In fact, a sizeable number of the population belongs to the ranks of food and beverage industry workers.
Safety First
Commercial kitchens are one of the wettest and greasiest areas in a restaurant and most commercial establishment. Hence, it is also the slipperiest area of all. Kitchen crews walk from one spot of the kitchen to another and they do that fast while carrying big hot pans and sizzling plates. Accidents, in the form of slips and falls, are inevitable.
According to industrial studies, a good number of employees in this kind of work setting have been involved in one or two work-related accidents caused by wet and slippery floors. And although majority of the slips and falls were regarded as minor injuries, damage and compensation claims filed by workmen against their employers balloon to thousands and millions of dollars annually. Add to that the claims made by ordinary people who accidentally trip or incur injuries while in the premise of their companies.
Restaurants and other industries operating in the earlier times used to operate without mats. Employees work at their own risk. However, as times change and insurance claims become an issue, managements realized how important workplace safety is to the overall operation of the business. Hence, the concept of using commercial kitchen floor liners or matting, in general, was introduced. With anti-slip, wetness-reducing mats, safety level inside the establishment rose tremendously.
Productivity
Aside from safety, another major impact of using commercial kitchen floor mats is in terms of productivity. Kitchen crews work long stretch of hours standing and walking on concrete floors. Fatigue, foot problems, and back pain are the most common effects this position and movement give to a vast number of employees. In 1983 alone, 83 percent of US laborers had been found to be suffering from foot or lower leg problems. These health dilemmas often result to discomfort, persistent pain, deformities, and fatigue causing detrimental blow to employees’ performance at work.
In the light of knowing the obvious need for productivity boost, food establishments began using industrial kitchen floor mats inside the workstations. These mats increase productivity first, by reducing the rate of slips and falls in the workplace, and second, by providing comfort to the feet. As employees begin to work on matted floors, foot pain and fatigue diminished. With the additional support provided by commercial kitchen floor mats, productivity among workers began to swell.
Properties
Commercial kitchen floor mats are different to regular kitchen floor mats in many ways. When it comes to functionality, restaurant kitchen floor mats were designed primarily to contain the volume of wetness and grease in highly stepped on commercial kitchens. They also serve to decrease fatigue and foot pain among workers who usually work in a stance.
The materials and technology applied in crafting commercial kitchen floor mats are also more sophisticated. Industrial floor mats today are equipped with anti-fatigue, anti-static, anti-slip, grease resistant, chemical resistant, and temperature resistant properties.
- Anti-fatigue mats provide adequate support to the foot by reducing and absorbing shock caused by prolonged foot-floor contact. Almost all commercial kitchen floor mats have anti-fatigue properties in them. Anti-fatigue levels range from moderate to high. Rubber, gel, and plastic mats are popular materials used in making such mats.
- Anti-static mats foil the accumulation of static electricity which could harm personnel and sensitive electronic equipment. They can either be conductive or semi-conductive depending on the nature of the industry.
- Anti-slip mats prevent the incidence of slips and falls among workers constantly exposed to wet and greasy floors. Beveled contours of mats’ edges usually signify anti-slip properties.
- Grease resistant mats absorb grease efficiently. They lessen the slipperiness of floors and protect it from damage caused by the oily substance in the long run.
- Chemical-resistant mats can withstand chemical spills without wearing out. These mats are mostly seen in chemical laboratories.
- Temperature-resistant mats are highly durable mats appropriate for restaurants and food chains. They can endure extremely hot and cold temperatures. In restaurants where spillage of boiling oil or hot liquid is more frequent, such mats provide adequate coverage.
Benefits
Installing commercial kitchen floor mats is one of the top 3 solutions to preventing slip and fall accidents in commercial establishments. Amazingly, it is also one of the most inexpensive way to bolster safety and productivity among workers. On top of that, getting and bedding in mats to floor surfaces is easy and quick. Hence, organizations find matting very beneficial. Here are a few successful actual applications of matting in different industries:
- A large business with assembly line operations recorded an 18% rise in productivity among its workers in the last few hours of every 8 hour work load. Workers attribute this increased productivity in the comfort provided by the matting.
- Anti-fatigue commercial mats have significantly reduced slip and fall problems by 20% in a manufacturing plant in Southeast Asia.
- Time lost due to back pain by cashiers in a supermarket chain in the US shrunk by 16% after the management started putting mats on the cashier station areas.
- A chain restaurant testified that since they started using kitchen floor mats in their dishwashing and prep areas, glass breakage dwindled by 24%.
Seeing a host of advantages matting provides, using commercial kitchen floor mats in restaurants and other industries is a cheap but reliable investment worth considering. Though no law stating the requirement of matting in all industries with frequent damp and slippery floorings has yet been passed, matting is an indispensable tool in any existing kitchen-dependent business.