For many employees across different industries today, a typical workday means hours of standing up on hard work area surfaces.
These long hours spent standing up have resulted in high injury rates, with cases ranging from simple body aches and pains to serious strains and sprains.
To address this, employers like you may have thought of buying industrial or anti-fatigue mats that can help ensure your employees' comfort while working.
However, there's a wide range of these mats currently out in the market today, coming in different sizes, makes, and made out of different materials.
This can easily bewilder anyone who's buying mats for their business.
To help out, here are four basic guide questions that you must ask yourself before selecting and buying an industrial mat: How resilient is the mat, or how fast will it "recover"? To answer this question, we must first understand the concepts of resiliency and recovery in these mats.
Resiliency and recovery are basically how the mat responds to the weight and posture of the person standing on it, and the comfort level of the said worker.
A good anti-fatigue mat stimulates the leg muscles and increases circulation by helping the worker assume subtle posture changes while on the mat.
When talking about resiliency and recovery, it's not enough that the mat is simply soft.
It's similar to buying a mattress - if a mattress is too soft, then you will end up with more body aches and pains compared to a good, firm one.
And your mat must not be too hard, either, or it simply defeats the purpose of buying mats to cover up a hard work surface.
Is the mat securely attached to the floor? Of course, one reason why any kind of mat is installed is to help prevent people from slipping, falling or tripping.
If your mat is not securely attached to the floor, instead of preventing people from slipping or tripping, it may even increase the risk of these kinds of accidents happening.
There are several different ways to secure industrial mats depending on the make and kind of the mat.
For small and lightweight mats, double-sided carpet tape can do the trick.
Meanwhile, thicker, heavy-duty rubber mats usually have beveled edging so that people won't trip when they get on or off the mat.
And for mats used in wet or slippery conditions, textured surfaces are necessary to increase traction.
How do I clean the mat? Since anti-fatigue mats are used in different industries, some mats that can be used in some industries may not be used for others.
This is especially true when it comes to cleanliness standards, as some industries have very stringent requirements.
Among these two very strict industries are the healthcare and food industries.
The food industry, for example, may require sanitizing mats that may not be necessarily needed in manufacturing or heavy industry.
How durable is the mat? This is quite different from the concept of resiliency and recovery that was explained earlier.
Durability in anti-fatigue mats basically concern how the mat is made, and what it is made out of.
This is an important consideration especially in the manufacturing industry, which may require mats made out of highly chemical-resistant material.