Comfort Underfoot Reduces Strain

As shown on StandingShoes.net, proper footwear can help reduce some of the harmful effects of prolonged standing and walking but softer, resilient rubber floor coverings also offer an important weapon in the battle against muscle fatigue and aching backs, legs and feet. Its content (high-quality industrial and natural rubber) and structure make rubber flooring especially resilient, easing the stress of walking and standing as it ensures comfort underfoot and allows staff to concentrate on the work at hand rather than the pain in their feet.

This same resiliency makes it easier for staff to move carts, wheelchairs and other pieces of equipment across rooms and down hallways. At the same time, it offers important slip resistant properties to staff and patients alike. This is especially critical in orthopedic, geriatric and rehabilitative areas of healthcare facilities. In addition, the resiliency of rubber flooring can provide a softer landing than other floor coverings and minimize the impact of a fall or misstep.

Simple Maintenance Saves Time and Money

Rubber floorings dense, non-porous surface resists chemicals and disinfectants, such as betadine. Most spills can be removed easily without residual staining. When it is time to clean the floor, the regimen can be as simple as using a mop and little more than water. Harsh cleaning chemicals are not required. Nor are waxes, speciality coatings, and strippers. You could visit Vacuumshop to find reviews of the best steam mops, which you could use to clean it if there has been a big spill or if it has muddy footprints all over it. This is important because steam mops differ greatly in how good they are. Clearly, if you are going to use a steam mop, you will want to know the best steam mop so that it actually cleans the floor and isn’t just pushing the dirt around. This light cleaning eliminates the need for labor-intensive stripping and re-coating, which saves money on fewer cleaning products and reduced labor hours. Meanwhile, the floors naturally bacteriostatic and fungistatic properties continue to inhibit the growth of bacteria and help meet the stringent hygienic requirements of healthcare facilities.

The floors simple cleaning regimen also means that large areas of a facility do not need to be removed from service while wax is applied and allowed to dry. This is especially important in busy health care facilities that operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it translates to fewer, less intrusive interruptions for patients and the medical personnel treating them.

No Fumes Means Better Indoor Air Quality
Additionally, the absence of fumes associated with harsh cleaning products, waxes and sealants contribute to improved indoor air quality (IAQ), as does the absence of PVCs, plasticizers or halogens in the flooring. This, in turn, helps create an environment that safeguards the health of staff and promotes healing, especially for patients suffering from respiratory conditions and allergies.

The floor also offers healthcare facilities a durable solution, even as heavy equipment and furnishings are moved regularly and foot traffic is often heavy. In fact, rubber flooring can have an extended life cycleas long as 30 yearswhich reduces the need for frequent removal and disposal and delivers long-term savings.

In addition, rubber flooring provides electrostatic dissipative properties that protect a hospitals investment in sensitive instruments and electronic equipment, eliminating malfunctions or damage caused by electrostatic charges.

Quiet Encourages Concentration and Healing

All of this equipment, as well as the hustle and bustle of a busy health care facility, can create a noisy environment one with the potential to distract staff members and prevent patients from getting the rest they need. The noise abatement properties of rubber flooring can address issues related to noise. In fact, rubber floor coverings have been shown to attenuate 70 percent of unwanted noise and absorb as much as 17 decibels of sound. The result is a staff better able to concentrate on the work before them and patients better able to sleep.

Design Promotes Healing and Pleasant Working Environment

The appearance of floor coverings can also impact patients and staff. For example, a soft, warm color palette in patient rooms and recovery areas can help reassure and relax the patient. On the other hand, areas geared toward children often rely on bright colors and accents to stimulate and excite young patients. Rubber floor coverings are available in a variety of colors, textures and patterns, making it easy to create an inviting and calming atmosphere for patients and staff while incorporating colorful accents and inlays that can enhance a design, provide important wayfinding or serve as teaching tools. Whats more, the floors versatility in performance and design promotes transition from one area of a facility to another and supports a comprehensive and coordinated design that minimizes a building owners investment in multiple flooring products with different maintenance requirements, performance features and longevity claims.

Tasha Hughes is the marketing specialist for Nora Systems Inc.

The post The Benefits of Rubber Flooring appeared first on HCO News.

HealthCare Construction + Operations News talks with Stephen Race, occupational psychologist, workplace safety expert and co-founder of TalentClick, about how construction companies can use the assessment for their benefit.

Q: How does TalentClick work with construction companies?

Race: What we focus on can be distilled down to a better understanding of people, such as candidates considered for hiring or existing employees. We focus on defining what makes people different in terms of personality traits. For example, we know that some people are more careful than others, so we provide information on people, describing them and then linking that to how things will play out on the job in terms of workplace safety.

Q: How has TalentClick assisted employers to develop effective safety training and recruitment procedures?

Race: We’re focusing on individuals. The real difference with our approach is that we look at how people are unique and different and tailor training, coaching and hiring to who a person is. In the hiring process, you can have someone take the TalentClick assessment, which will identify strengths of a person and areas that are of a possible concern that employers can probe into. It’s really about looking at the process person by person.

In the training world, what’s previously been done is that everyone has gotten the same training, regardless of who they are, how they learn or what their work style is. What we’ve learned is that a lot of people learn what they should in training but don’t actually put it into practice and forget about it when they’re under stress. Based on a specific person’s training needs, we can offer up techniques that would work best to approach them before waiting until someone gets injured.

Q: How does TalentClick provide consultation for construction employers and management teams?

Race: Our reports that we give offer interview questions to better understand how a person might handle a situation. Sometimes we get brought in to do training sessions and spend a lot of time running through different scenarios on different types of people.

Q: What personality factors and training do you believe make an ideal front line worker?

Race: The most important one that we found to look at is impulsiveness. That’s around how cautious the person is and whether they think things through before they act. When we’ve done work with construction companies, front line workers that reported highly on impulsiveness were five times more likely to have a safety incident.

Another is the level of anxiousness – if a person is under a lot of stress, under pressure and they’re rushed. Some people can handle that pressure and can be rushed, whilst others’ safety behavior just falls away when they’re under pressure. Stress is, unfortunately, part of all jobs. It’s important that a person can work under some stress. However, if they can’t, it might be worth them trying to find a way to manage this stress. For some people, they find that using CBD products can really help them to relax in stressful situations. There are many companies who offer products like this, which is why it’s good to read some reviews beforehand, such as this CBDistillery review here. Hopefully, that helps other people to cope with stress, allowing them to remain safe in the workplace. Stress is something that will crop up in every job, so it’s always good to be able to manage your stress.

Q: By using a hiring method like this, is there a concern of hiring employees that have too similar personalities?

Race: With this assessment, because it’s specifically around safety, it’s not looking at general personalities. It’s looking at their approach to these situations. It’s just questioning if a person has any risks specifically around safety. Because that’s a smaller part of who they are, we don’t worry about that affecting the hiring process.

Q: How can companies use your tool to determine whether to hire or learn how to train someone that may have poor assessment results?

Race: We never say don’t hire this person based on assessment results. Instead, we may say here’s some potential problems, here’s some additional questions to ask them in the hiring process and keep an eye on them if you’re hiring them. It’s all about tailoring your approach on how to work with them. There aren’t many people qualified for some of these positions, so companies often hire them, but this gives the company a leg up on the training process. This is very important in the first couple months of the job. For someone who doesn’t like rules, you can explain why the rules are there. For an anxious person, you can take more time to build their confidence in these tasks or give them a mentor that makes them feel like they have support.

Q: Can you provide specific examples of the training and recruitment changes construction companies have made after implementing TalentClick’s behavioral assessment tools?

Race: The assessment gives an employer an idea of who they should give the high-pressure work or the competitive work. It gives them an idea of a person’s strong suits and makes them more efficient. The people doing the job are much happier because they’re not out of their comfort zone.

One of our clients started a safety mentor program and we helped them initiate it. They designated people who are naturally safe and have the right attitude towards safety as safety mentors. Then, they got together teams to coach each other. People learn a lot more about each other this way, and it encourages collaboration around safety.

The client’s projection [after using TalentClick] is that they would reduce the number of incidents by eight a year and those were recordable incidents. Preventing two or three paid for our complete program. For their new hires, they project it will reduce incident rates between 25 and 50 percent

Q: What is your general advice for managers and employers when it comes to workplace safety?

Race: For someone to go through the assessment it takes about 15 to 20 minutes, but the return is well worth it. Everyone is skeptical of changing how to do things, but this is a little thing they can do that can make a big difference.

After you have conducted all these methods in the hiring process it will then be time to give them background checks to assure their quality. This can be done with the help of onboarding specialists like WorkBright, who use virtual onboarding services to make sure that the candidates you want to hire are suitable for the job.

The post Hiring and Training to Encourage Workplace Safety appeared first on HCO News.