At my place of work, we have hardwood floors, and are open to the public. People walking around the establishment constantly remark on how slippery the floor is. I don’t really notice it because we are required to wear slip-resistant shoes (it’s a restaurant, and even in a normal restaurant slip-and-fall injuries are relatively common due to liquid spills etc.)
A few people have already fell but to my knowledge didn’t bring lawsuits. It’s just a matter of time though until one does. (it’s a new restaurant that has been open just a few months)
So what can be done to make the floor less slippery? What method would be most cost-effective? I’m not a manager (yet) so I don’t have the power to actually do anything about it, but I would at least like to be able to recommend to my boss that such-and-such might be a good solution (and to satisfy my own curiosity about how to solve such a problem).
It sounds like the entirely wrong finish was put on the floor.
There are non-slip clear wood finishes available - they generally work by having powdered quartz or similar minerals in them. Unfortunately, you’d probably need to sand the floors to bare wood and start all over as it’s almost always impossible to put a new finish on top of an existing finish.
There are also coatings intended for stages and dance floors that can be applied to an existing floor finish. “Slip Nomor” is an example of these. This would be a lot more cost-effective than stripping and refinishing as there’d be no downtime - just scrub the floor, let it dry, mop the stuff on at night, and you’ll be good to go the next morning. Refinishing would involve days of closed-off areas, noise and dust.
Also see if you can get entrance mats to cut down on the amount of dirt tracked onto the floor, and dust-mop frequently. Used to see this problem a lot in a school gym – the floor would be refinished every year, it would be non-slip for about a month, then gradually turn to ice again as the kids tracked dirt onto it from outside.
If your finish is already very slippery, it will probably need to be refinished. Usually that can be done without sanding down to the bare wood though. Just a “screening”, enough to scuff the previous finish for mechanical adhesion, will usually do it. Consult a hardwood floor contractor, of course.