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How Do You Reduce Slip Risk Across Multiple Sites?
You reduce slip risk across multiple sites by applying the same measurement and improvement process consistently everywhere, rather than reacting site by site whenever an incident occurs. This means testing each site’s highest-risk zones, using the same framework to identify what’s driving the risk, and maintaining the same standard across your whole portfolio. Consistency matters more than intensity at any single location.
The short why
Slip risk doesn’t respect site boundaries. If one location has a contamination issue at its entrance, similar sites with similar layouts and footfall patterns are likely exposed to the same risk, whether or not it’s shown up yet. Reducing risk at scale means applying one consistent standard everywhere, not fixing each site individually as problems appear.
Why reacting site by site doesn’t actually reduce your overall risk
This is the belief worth challenging directly. Many multi-site organisations respond to slip risk only after an incident, addressing the specific location involved while every other site carries on unchanged. That approach treats each incident as isolated, when it’s often a symptom of a risk that exists across several similar locations.
Waiting to deal with it if a claim happens means you’re always a step behind, at whichever site happened to have the incident first. Treating prevention as a portfolio-wide investment, rather than a reaction confined to one location, is what actually reduces risk across the whole estate.
Apply the same assessment to every site
Reducing risk consistently starts with using the same method everywhere. Every site should be assessed using pendulum testing, focused on its highest-risk zones: entrances, kitchens, bars, and any area prone to moisture or contamination. The specific findings will differ from site to site, but the process for finding them should be identical.
This consistency is what allows you to compare sites meaningfully, spot patterns across your portfolio, and prioritise attention based on actual risk levels, rather than which site happens to be top of mind.
Use CHIMES to keep findings comparable across sites
Once each site has been measured, the CHIMES framework gives every location a consistent lens for understanding what’s actually driving its risk:
- Contamination: what’s ending up on the floor at this specific site, and where it tends to build up
- Heel: the footwear typically worn in each zone, and whether that’s a factor
- Individual: who’s exposed, and how often, at this location
- Maintenance: whether current cleaning products or methods are helping or reducing grip
- Environment: lighting, gradients, or wet-to-dry transitions specific to that site
- Surface: the floor material itself, and its measured slip resistance
Because every site is assessed against the same six factors, you get genuinely comparable data across your portfolio, rather than a collection of unrelated, site-specific observations.
Prioritise by risk level, not by which site had the last incident
Not every site or zone carries the same level of risk, and treating them all identically wastes effort. A useful approach is zoning each site by risk level: high-risk areas like entrances and kitchens get the most frequent testing and the highest standard of control, while low-risk areas like quiet corridors need far less attention.
Applying this zonal thinking consistently across every site means your effort goes where the actual risk sits, rather than being concentrated wherever the most recent incident happened to occur. Slip Safety Services has found that organisations who move from reactive, site-by-site responses to this structured, portfolio-wide approach see a 57%+ average reduction in slip incidents, because the same standard is applied everywhere, not just where something has already gone wrong.
What to do about it
Start by listing every site in your portfolio and identifying each one’s highest-risk zones, using the same criteria across all of them. Get those zones professionally tested on a rolling schedule, so no site goes unchecked for an extended period, and track the results centrally so patterns across the portfolio become visible.
Next step
If you’re not sure how consistently your sites are currently being managed, the Slip Prevention Scorecard takes a few minutes per site and gives you a comparable starting point. For a proper, defensible reading of your highest-risk sites, a professional slip test gives you the full picture. And for the fuller method behind building this out properly, Slipology by Christian Harris covers the process in depth.
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