Floor Mats: One Size Doesn’t Really Fit All

If your company’s environmental services manager were to call Alsco to arrange for floor mat delivery, he or she would have some decisions to make. Floor mats are not ‘one size fits all’ items. Today’s marketplace boasts many different kinds of mats, each with a different purpose. It would be up to your environmental services manager to figure out what was required on your property.

It goes without saying that floor mats are a must-have for any commercial property. They are especially important at properties that welcome the public as guests. As litigious as our culture has become, you are taking too much of a risk welcoming guests onto your property without floor mats in all the right places.

Anti-Skid Floor Mats

Also known as non-slip floor mats, anti-skid floor mats are the starting point for most companies looking to begin floor care service. An anti-skid mat is a floor mat placed at the entryway of a building. Its name comes from the rubber backing that prevents the mat from sliding across the floor. A good anti-skid mat will also be resistant to wrinkles and ripples.

These sorts of floor mats are absolutely necessary to protect guests from slip and fall accidents relating to rain, snow, and ice. In industrial environments, they are also appropriate in work areas prone to slippery floors. Those deployed in public areas can be plain or imprinted with the company logo.

Scraper Mats

Another kind of floor mat commonly found in entryways is the scraper mat. Where your typical anti-skid mat includes a piling that makes it look a lot like a throw rug, the top surface of a scraper mat features a series of rubber ridges for scraping one’s shoes.

The point of the scraper mat should be obvious. This is the kind of floor mat you place at entryways where it is common for guests to track in dirt, mud, and other sorts of debris. Deploying scraper mats is more about protecting interior floors than preventing slips or falls, but the mats do handle rain, snow, and ice quite well.

It is imperative that a scraper mat have an anti-skid rubber backing. Otherwise, the simple act of scraping one’s feet could result in a slip-and-fall accident.

Anti-Fatigue Mats

A third kind of floor mat companies deploy is the anti-fatigue mat. This is a mat that really has nothing to do with visitor safety at all. Rather, it is about employee comfort and long-term occupational safety. Anti-fatigue mats give employees something soft and comfortable to stand on so that their feet and legs are not subject to the punishment of standing on concrete all day.

Concrete is a very unforgiving material. It barely absorbs any shock as you stand on, or walk across, it. Concrete also doesn’t flex when weight is applied to it. As such, standing on it all day can make for very sore feet, legs, and backs. People who do so frequently complain of orthopedic issues.

An anti-fatigue mat changes the game by putting a shock absorbing surface underfoot. Employees can move around on that surface and trust the mat to cushion their movement. A good anti-fatigue mat eliminates most concerns associated with standing on bare concrete.

Of course, there are combination floor mats that utilize the best features of the three mats mentioned in this post. That is why companies like Alsco offer so many different options. There is no one-size-fits-all floor mat for every purpose. That is a good thing. Having so many different kinds of floor mats to choose from meets a lot of different needs.