Wet floor signs play a crucial role in helping workplaces to avoid the slips, trips and falls that can result from wet floor areas on site. A slip and fall in the workplace is one of the most common types of occupational accident, but it can also be one of the most dangerous, potentially leading to broken bones and long-term injuries.

Having a wet floor sign in place will help to alert your workers and site visitors to the potential slip hazard caused by wet floors. This is essential if your walking surfaces at work regularly become wet due to exposure to bad weather or accidental spills, or simply as a result of routine cleaning and mopping.

However, using wet floor signs effectively means that they must be properly placed in a prominent location. Here, we will explore the various factors to consider when deciding where to place a wet floor sign.

Where should wet floor signage be placed?

Finding the right location for wet floor signs plays a crucial role in whether or not they will be effective for accident prevention. If placed incorrectly, floor signs can be easily missed, or even become trip hazards in and of themselves.

Here are the factors to bear in mind when setting up caution signs for slippery floors:

• You must place signs prominently so they can be easily seen by any employees, customers or other site visitors as they are entering wet floor areas. This will mean placing them near the entrance to the area, in an open and highly visible location, where they cannot be missed.
• You must have enough safety signs to cover all of the directions and angles from which someone might approach the hazard area. If you are operating a larger site with multiple entrances to the area with the wet walking surface, you will need to set up an appropriate number of signs.
• As a rule, try to arrange your safety signs in a triangle around the wet area, in order to cover as many angles as possible and warn people approaching from all directions.
• Do not place wet floor signage in a location where it could become a trip hazard. For example, placing signs near a doorway, staircase or in a narrow corridor can easily turn them into potential hazards, as can placing them near a blind corner.
• Where possible, ensure that wet floor signs are visible on security cameras. If someone does slip and fall on a wet surface despite your precautions, having video proof that you had the proper signage in place will help to reduce your liability.

Other considerations when using wet floor signs

To get the most out of your wet floor signs and ensure they can be placed effectively as and when they are needed, there are a number of other steps you can take:

• Ensure that you have plenty of signs stored around your premises, so you can quickly access them whenever they might be needed. It is best to keep signs closest to areas where they are most likely to be needed, such as bathrooms, entrance areas that are exposed to rainwater, or locations where spillages of a slippery substance would be considered a frequent risk.
• Make sure you have enough wet floor signs on site for use in multiple locations at the same time, especially if you are the property owner of large premises. This will ensure that any member of staff will be able to find and place a safety sign to prevent slips, even if there is another spillage somewhere else on-site at the same time.
• Inform all staff members of where wet floor signs can be found, and ensure they are not locked away where they can only be accessed by dedicated janitorial staff.
• As soon as a slippery floor has been cleaned up, make sure the wet floor signs are put away promptly. Leaving these signs on display even when no fall hazards are present will reduce their effectiveness.

By taking these steps, your business will get the most effective use out of these important safety measures, ensuring that you are able to properly warn people when a spillage occurs and bring the risk of slip and fall injuries to a minimum.

Find out more

If you are looking for high-quality safety signs to protect your workers against the hazards posed by slippery floors, take a look at our full range of wet floor signs.

If you have any questions about which of our caution signs would work best for your site, give SafetyBuyer a call today on 0800 043 1061.