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Building a Winter Slip Prevention Plan Across Your Hospitality Estate
A winter slip prevention plan is a structured, repeatable way of measuring floor grip, fixing weak spots and responding to wet weather at every site, before the cold season arrives. It is not a stock of wet floor signs. Signs warn people about a hazard, while a plan controls the hazard itself, and proves that it is under control.
Wet floor signs are out. Does that mean the job is done?
If you run facilities across several hospitality sites, winter has a familiar rhythm. The first wet week arrives, yellow signs appear at every entrance, and the cleaning teams work harder. By the time guests arrive, the lobby looks tidy and the signs are in place. It feels like the right response, and it is easy to believe that once the signs are out, we have done our bit.
That belief is worth challenging. A sign warns people after the risk already exists. It does not remove the hazard, and it does nothing for a floor that is slippery while looking clean and dry. This guide sets out a better approach to winter slip risk in hospitality: a plan built on measurement and control, applied consistently across every site, with signs used for what they are good at, which is warning people about a temporary hazard.
Why aren’t wet floor signs a winter slip prevention plan?
A sign does one job. It tells someone a hazard is there. It does not make the floor less slippery. If the sign is missed, or a guest is carrying luggage and looking at the reception desk rather than the floor, the risk is exactly what it was before.
Signs also have a quieter downside. If a sign is out every day all winter, it is a symptom of a problem that is not being dealt with. In one prosecution brought by a local authority after a fatal slip in a supermarket, the council said that signage alone is not an adequate control. Proactive measures were needed to stop floors becoming slippery or to prevent people using them. A sign can show that a hazard was known and left in place.
Hospitality adds its own problem. Your guests are not familiar with your building. They may be tired from travelling, in unfamiliar shoes, or carrying bags, drinks or children. You cannot rely on them to notice and react to a sign.
A safe floor needs control, not just a sign.
What does a winter slip prevention plan need to include?
A good plan has five parts, and they map neatly onto the Slipology Method:
- Assess: measure the real grip of your highest-risk floors, wet as well as dry
- Amend: fix the floor and the conditions at source
- Advocate: get your teams, contractors and managers working to the same standard
- Assure: maintain grip through the right cleaning and planned re-checks
- Affirm: keep dated records, so you can prove the result
Each part is explained below, with hospitality in mind. The point is that signs sit inside the plan as one control among several. They are not the plan.
Where does winter risk concentrate in a hospitality venue?
Not every part of a venue carries the same risk. Most of a building is a 70 mile an hour zone, where keeping floors clean, dry and clear of spills is enough. A smaller number of areas are 20 mile an hour zones, where you need to go further. In hospitality, in winter, these are usually:
- Entrances and lobbies: wet shoes, umbrellas and luggage arrive here first
- Car park to door routes and external steps: rain, leaves, mud and, in cold weather, ice
- Bars and restaurant floors: spilled drinks and food, with wet shoes adding to the mix
- Kitchens and back-of-house corridors: grease and water, with staff moving quickly
- Pool, spa and changing areas: wet by design, and often reached via cold, damp routes
- Function rooms and event spaces: heavy footfall and temporary set-ups during busy periods
- Transitions between floor types: tile to carpet, ramps and steps
Focusing your effort on these zones is cheaper and more effective than spreading it thinly across the whole building.
How do you find out what is driving the risk? Using CHIMES
The CHIMES framework gives you a consistent way to look at what drives slip risk in each zone, at every site:
- Contamination: rainwater, melted snow, mud, leaves, spilled drinks, food and grease
- Heel: guests’ footwear, which you cannot control, and staff footwear, which you can
- Individual: who is exposed, from guests unfamiliar with the building to staff on long shifts, and what they are carrying
- Maintenance: cleaning products, methods and timings, and whether floors are dried properly
- Environment: weather coming in, lighting, ramps, steps and the move from outside to inside
- Surface: the floor material and its measured slip resistance, wet as well as dry
Using the same six factors at every site means findings are comparable. You can then see patterns across your estate, rather than treating each venue as a one-off.
How do you measure whether a floor is safe in wet weather?
By testing it. Slip resistance is assessed using pendulum testing, the method preferred by the HSE and relied on in UK slip litigation. It swings a rubber slider across the floor to mimic a heel strike, and produces a Pendulum Test Value (PTV). A PTV of 36 or above is generally regarded as low slip potential. Below that, risk rises as the number falls.
Test your priority zones wet as well as dry. A dry reading says very little about how an entrance or a poolside route will behave in the rain. Floors also change with wear, cleaning and footfall, so last year’s result does not tell you how a floor performs today.
Measurement also helps separate causes that look the same:
- If a zone tests poorly even after a thorough clean, the surface itself may be the problem
- If it tests much better after a deep clean with the right product, residue was the cause
- If readings fall after a change of product or contractor, the new approach may be lowering grip
Without this, the response to a slip is usually another sign.
How do you build the plan across multiple sites?
Consistency matters as much as intensity. Slip risk does not respect site boundaries. If one venue has a contamination problem at its main entrance, similar sites with similar layouts and footfall are likely to have the same problem, whether or not anything has been reported.
A practical way to build it:
- Zone every site. Use the same criteria to identify the 20 mile an hour zones at each venue.
- Measure the priority zones. Test them wet, and record dated results.
- Compare across the estate. Look for patterns, such as the same entrance design causing the same problem.
- Fix at source. Match the fix to the cause, whether that is cleaning, matting, or treating the surface.
- Set a standard. Agree the same cleaning methods, matting standards and wet weather response at every site.
- Schedule re-checks. Decide when each zone will be re-tested, and what will trigger an extra check.
Slip Safety Services has found that organisations following this approach see a 57%+ average reduction in slip incidents. The improvement comes from fixing real causes in the right places, rather than relying on signs and a quiet incident log.
What should cleaning and matting look like in winter?
Cleaning is an activity. A safe floor is an outcome. In winter, you can clean more often and still end up with a more slippery floor, because mopping adds moisture and the wrong product can leave a residue that lowers grip. Match products and methods to each type of flooring, dry floors properly, and move deep cleaning out of guest hours where you can. Where cleaning has to happen while guests are present, a sign has a real role as a warning about the temporary hazard that cleaning creates.
Matting matters too, but it only works if it is large enough, in good condition and covers where feet are wettest. In our work, we have seen a major station with three metres of entrance matting where the floor was still wet well beyond the end of it on a rainy day. If three metres is not always enough there, a single short mat at a hotel door is unlikely to be.
What does a wet weather response look like in practice?
A plan should say what happens when the weather changes, not just what happens before winter. A simple trigger-based routine helps front of house and housekeeping teams act without waiting to be told:
- Rain forecast or starts: put down additional matting at entrances, check it covers where feet are wettest, and increase checks on lobby and entrance floors
- Entrance floor is wet: dry it promptly, and use a sign only as a warning while it is being dealt with
- Cold, frosty conditions: check external steps, ramps and car park routes, and follow your site’s procedure for treating them
- After cleaning: make sure floors are dry before guests walk on them
- After any slip or near miss: record it, check the floor, and re-test where you can
This is general information, not legal advice. Requirements for external areas vary by site and circumstance, so check what applies with your health and safety adviser.
What good looks like
A hospitality estate with a strong winter slip prevention plan has every site zoned by risk, and recent, dated PTV readings for the highest-risk areas, wet and dry. Entrance matting is checked for size, condition and coverage, and replaced when it wears. Cleaning products and methods suit each type of flooring, and floors are left dry.
Front of house, housekeeping and kitchen teams know what to do when the weather turns, without waiting for instructions. Near misses are recorded and used as information. Standards are consistent across every venue, not just the one that had the last scare. And when someone asks how ready the estate is for winter, there is a measured answer, not a reference to how many signs have been ordered.
The takeaway
A wet floor sign tells people a hazard is there. It does not make the floor safe. A winter slip prevention plan measures the floors that matter, fixes what it finds, sets the same standard at every site, and keeps the evidence. Stop guessing. Start measuring.
Next step
If you are not sure how your sites would fare in the first wet week, the Slip Prevention Scorecard takes under four minutes per building. It gives you an overall score and a score for each of the six CHIMES factors, so you can see where to focus first. For the fuller method behind measuring, improving and proving floor grip, Slipology by Christian Harris covers the process in depth.
FAQ
What should a winter slip prevention plan include?
It should include a measurement of slip resistance for your highest-risk zones, wet as well as dry, and actions to fix what the readings show. It should also set standards for cleaning and matting, a wet weather response for staff, and a schedule for re-testing. Dated records show that the plan is working.
Are wet floor signs enough to prevent slips in winter?
No. A sign warns people that a hazard exists, but it does not make the floor less slippery. It can also show that the hazard was known and left in place. Signs work best as a temporary warning inside a wider plan that controls the hazard.
Which areas of a hotel or restaurant are most at risk in winter?
Entrances and lobbies, external routes and steps, bars and restaurant floors, kitchens and back-of-house corridors, pool and spa areas, and transitions between floor types usually carry the most risk. These are the places most likely to be wet or contaminated, and they see the heaviest footfall.
How do you keep slip prevention consistent across multiple sites?
Use the same method at every site: zone each venue by risk, measure the priority zones wet, and compare the results across the estate. Agree common standards for cleaning, matting and wet weather response, and schedule re-tests, so no site goes unchecked.
What is a safe slip resistance level for a wet floor?
A Pendulum Test Value (PTV) of 36 or above when wet is generally regarded as low slip potential, based on HSE guidance. Below that, risk rises as the number falls. The reading should be taken for the specific zone, wet as well as dry.