Floor Matting For Ergonomic Protection
Use floor matting to help your workers reach a higher ground of safety
As with all equipment in your facility, your workers are important parts of the operations process and the bottom line. Keeping them safe is always a high priority, but just as important is making sure they can be comfortable (or at least as comfortable as allowed) so that performance and productivity have less of a chance of faltering. You want to protect the human body from unnecessary strain and stress in all situations, but while standing is an area easy to offer help and reduce fatigue.
Applying the use of anti-fatigue mats throughout your facility can not only aid in this never-ending quest to protect workers but also enhance areas not thought of as important for continuous care.
Standing in pain
We’ve all felt it – foot, leg and back pain resulting from long days of standing and working. It is one of the most common causes of physical fatigue in the workplace. The reason this fatigue occurs is from a constriction of the muscles used when standing, and a reduction of blood flow. This strain causes the heart to work harder in pumping blood through these constricted areas and robs the body of its precious energy. The result: pain, discomfort and fatigue.
How does a simple mat help?
So why add anti-fatigue mats to your operations? The simple answer is going with the flow!
Excessive standing, whether it’s at a workstation or any other area of an operation floor, can become highly uncomfortable and lead to the physical fatigue explained above. When you have leg muscles constricted for a long period of time to keep a person upright, that equation works out towards a reduction of blood flow every time. Making a worker’s heart work harder to keep the blood moving within those locked legs taxes a body’s energy, it’s just that simple.
What an anti-fatigue mat offers, though, is a way to help those leg muscles subtly contract and expand. This happens because they are attempting to adjust to the flexibility of the mat they are standing on, which in turn increases blood flow and the amount of oxygen reaching the heart. With this combination, you reduce fatigue and ease the strain of a worker standing for long periods on a job or task. Reducing this constrictive fatigue not only benefits your employees and their production but can also help your company avoid costly absenteeism and workman’s comp claims, which benefit your operations for the long-term.
Not just to ease the strain
While the main focus of adding anti-fatigue matting to your facility should be to help your workers reduce stress and strain when standing, consider the other benefits of placing these throughout your facility:
- Sure footing – If you have areas in your facility that could be considered slippery, then adding a mat for wet work areas can help reduce potential slips and the injuries/lost time that result from them. Also, workers who move up and down/ side to side need an ergonomic pathway that won’t become a trip hazard as they concentrate on their tasks on the production floor.
- Guided pathways – Using ergonomic tiles/mats with mats that have colored edges can provide you and your workers with highlighted areas that show where safe steps can be taken, what dangerous areas to avoid, and showcase cart paths.
- High visibility – Take safety a step further and wrap your dangerous areas in highly visible matting. These reminders will tell workers what areas to avoid and help you reduce potential injury and damage.
Adding anti-fatigue mats to your operations offers many benefits when looking to reduce overall employee stress and increase safety. By refusing to compromise on employee safety, you will ensure healthier and more productive workers….not to mention a better-looking operations floor.
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Evan Fleishacker is a Marketing Strategist at Cisco-Eagle. You can find him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/evanf