The Priority Gap: Why Slip Risk Gets Overlooked

Direct answer: Slip risk is one of the most relevant and most harmful hazards organisations face, yet it consistently receives less management attention than lower-frequency risks. Our third annual State of Safety survey found that 90% of respondents believe more could be done to reduce slip risk, but only 23% carry out scientific slip resistance testing to find out where the problem actually lies.

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A gap worth closing

Most safety teams know slips and trips matter. They rank near the top for relevance and for harm caused, survey after survey, year after year. So why do they keep slipping down the priority list once budgets and attention get allocated?

That question sat at the centre of this week’s Safety Roundtable, hosted by Christian Harris. The session walked through the results of the third annual State of Safety survey, a study run since 2022 that tracks how safety professionals across sectors see risk, priority and progress. Attendees including David, Darren, Mike and Max Clark joined the discussion live, adding their own experience from the floor.

The confidence and data gap

The survey opened with a striking mismatch. 95% of respondents rated their organisation’s safety performance as average or better. Only 62% agreed that their safety data actually reflects the real world risk within their organisation.

That is a significant drop, from near universal confidence to a much smaller group who trust the numbers behind it. As Christian put it, if we think we are doing well but our data does not show the true picture, we cannot be sure we are doing as well as we believe.

David, joining from a university safety programme, added a practical reason this gap persists. Students on his course have reported being denied access to ill health and absence data by their own employers, on the basis that it might be misused. Without access to that data, safety professionals cannot investigate the patterns that would actually change decision making.

Where attention does not match harm

This is where the priority gap becomes clearest. The survey asked respondents to rank risks three ways: how relevant each risk is, how much harm it causes, and how much management attention it receives.

Manual handling, trips and slips consistently top the charts for relevance and harm. But when it comes to attention, slips fell to eighth place and trips to fifth, while risks like falls from height and vehicular incidents moved to the top of the attention list despite ranking lower on relevance and harm.

This is not necessarily a sign of bad judgement. Organisations are often, quite reasonably, focusing resource on risks with the most severe potential outcomes. But it does raise a fair question: are the everyday, attritional risks causing the bulk of harm getting the resource they deserve?

The classic case: slip risk

Slip risk is a textbook example of this gap in action. Using our CHIMES framework, slip risk is shaped by six factors: Contamination, Heel, Individual, Maintenance, Environment and Surface. Most organisations manage the first five reasonably well, through cleaning schedules, signage and footwear policy.

What gets missed is the sixth: the Surface itself, and whether it has actually been measured. The survey found that 67% of respondents do not carry out any slip resistance testing at all. Without that measurement, a floor can look clean and dry and still be dangerously slippery. Many organisations who believe they have a slip problem actually have a grip problem they have never measured.

Slip Safety Services has found that pendulum testing and targeted surface improvement can deliver an average reduction in slip incidents of 57% or more across sites where it has been applied. Testing turns a guess into a fact that can be acted on.

Change resistance and competing priorities

When asked what stops organisations improving safety, the two most cited barriers were change resistance from colleagues and too many competing priorities. Christian argued that both of these can be improved, not solved outright, through stronger soft skills: explaining the value of a change clearly, listening to colleagues’ concerns, and making a better case for investment.

Gareth, in the session chat, agreed, noting that when the value of a change or control is explained well, it becomes easier for colleagues to get on board. John offered a sharper take on the same problem, describing how he responds when accused of being the most hated person in the room.

Technology adoption is accelerating, trust is not

One of the more surprising findings was around technology. Last year, 43% of respondents said they used no safety technology at all. This year, that figure fell to just 7%, with 34% now using some form of AI tool. Cost remains the biggest barrier to adoption, cited by 62% of respondents, followed by change resistance and difficulty getting leadership buy-in.

But adoption has outpaced trust. 93% of respondents believe technology can reduce risk, yet a separate report cited in the session found only 23% of people trust AI to keep them safe, compared with 91% who trust themselves. That is the same proximity bias showing up again: we tend to rate our own safety performance, and our own judgement, more favourably than the data supports.

The path forward

The session closed with a clear, practical direction: close the priority gap by measuring inputs and leading indicators, not just outcomes. Treat change resistance as a control problem to be worked on, not an obstacle to be avoided. And build the business case for technology and testing using the language the boardroom already speaks, cost, data and outcomes.

For slip risk specifically, that starts with one question: has your floor actually been tested, or are you assuming it is safe because it looks clean?

Pull quotes

“We’ve got a grip problem.” — Christian Harris

“Safety is now being seen as an enabler to production.” — Survey respondent

“I keep directors out of prison and employees off the sick list.” — John, Safety Roundtable attendee

Show notes

Episode summary: This Safety Roundtable session, hosted by Christian Harris, walks through the results of the third annual State of Safety survey. The discussion covers a gap between how confident organisations feel about their safety performance and how much they trust their own data, a mismatch between which risks cause the most harm and which receive the most management attention, a sharp rise in safety technology adoption alongside continued low trust in AI, and the specific case of slip risk, where most organisations still are not testing their floors despite believing more could be done.

Host: Christian Harris, founder of Slip Safety Services and author of Slipology. This session featured contributions from Safety Roundtable attendees including David, Darren, Mike, Max Clark, Gareth and John.

Key moments:

Links and resources mentioned:

Next step

Curious whether your own floors would hold up to scrutiny? Take the Slip Risk Scorecard to see where your grip risk actually stands, in a few minutes, with no guesswork involved.

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