December is an exciting time of year, jam-packed with festive activities. The approach of winter holidays has us decorating, shopping, baking, hosting parties, exchanging gifts and everything else that comes with making the season merry. But along with the fun comes a dangerous element: the influence of human factors, which often results in injuries.

When human factors are at play, the risk posed by other hazards skyrockets, and in the holiday season that means they contribute to slips, trips and falls (STF). Nothing ruins a time of celebration like an STF injury. That’s why, this December, it’s a good idea to design a digital display presentation around human factors and slips, trips and falls. It will help bring holiday states of mind into focus and keep employees at your facility safe, both on and off the job.

Safety is an excellent gift, because nothing spoils a party like a trip to the emergency room. An effective digital display presentation on this topic—which includes the human factors that most people experience during the holidays and how they impact the existing seasonal hazard of slips, trips and falls—can mean the difference between having a happy holiday or a dismal new year.

Rushing to the ground

With all the additional things on your to-do list (and not enough time to do them), the holiday season could justifiably be called the rushing season. In December, people often find themselves rushing to finish a lot of the tasks associated with the holidays, and that’s when they are extra vulnerable to STF hazards. Include an attention-grabbing stat in your digital display presentation to demonstrate how big of a problem holiday slips, trips and falls are. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)…

There are an average of 200 decorating-related injuries per day during the holiday season, most of which are falls.

The rushing nature of holiday task completion can impact how people see things—or fail to see things. Rushing can influence folks to take shortcuts and ultimately leave them vulnerable to slip, trip and fall incidents. Illustrate the dangers of rushing with relatable holiday examples. For instance, any time you rush in the kitchen, bad things can happen. A rushed cook could spill something on the floor, fail to clean as they go or not use an appropriate step ladder to reach things—three surefire contributors to slips, trips and falls. 

Another relatable example is if you’re outside putting up decorations or bringing in your groceries from the car. Slip, trip and fall hazards can be increased by the winter weather that accompanies the holiday season. An icy driveway or slick rooftop is dangerous on its own, but add in the human factor of rushing and the potential of getting hurt increases.

Be sure to include a tip in your digital display presentation to help people head off the effects of holiday hurrying. Predicting when rushing will happen can help you plan ahead to prevent a slip, trip and fall incident. Take note of when your to-do list is getting long and remind yourself to take extra time for safety. When it comes to rushing, it’s important to slow down and plan your tasks ahead of time.

The downward spiral of holiday frustration

Frustration strikes when things don’t go as you intended them to. This familiar feeling can be amplified around the holidays with so many activities and so much planning outside of your normal schedule. It’s natural to get angry or stressed out when your plans don’t go off without a hitch. But if you’re seeing red, you might not see the slip, trip and fall hazards that are right in front of you.

Here’s another eye-catching stat you can use in your digital display presentation to demonstrate how common frustration is during the holidays:

Nearly nine out of 10 people say that concerns such as not having enough money, missing loved ones and anticipating family conflict cause them stress at this time of year.

That frustrated feeling of ineffectiveness or lack of capacity to change the situation can be distracting to the point where you’re not able to think while performing mundane tasks. Unsurprisingly, the distracted mind will miss the most obvious dangers, leading to slip, trip or fall incidents. And those incidents can lead to even more frustration, contributing to a vicious cycle of human factors, risk and error. In order to overcome frustration you need to change the perception of risk. Common techniques for changing risk perception, gathered from our Solving slips, trips and falls once and for all guide, include:

• Play videos or share stories that show the impact of slips, trips and falls
•  Provide stats about the dangers and potential severity of slips, trips and falls (you could share some of the ones from this guide)
•  Ask how much an injury would limit them at work, at home with their family, and in sports and hobbies

Add these techniques to your digital display presentation to equip your audience with the tools to reframe risk and save them from spiraling into holiday frustration, which can lead to injury.

Drunk-tired for the holidays

It should be no surprise that people find themselves more tired during the holiday season. From preparing for gatherings to fitting them into a set number of days, many people wake earlier and go to bed later for the entire holiday season—which means they’re incurring sleep debt and putting themselves at higher risk of injury.

But they’re not just sleepy. Use a statistic like this in your digital display presentation to inform people that fatigue is comparable to alcohol when it comes to acting impaired:

20 hours without sleep is equivalent to a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.08%—the legal limit

Your digital display presentation should point out that because fatigue impacts everyday actions, slower reaction times and decreased alertness can lead to a slip, trip or fall incident. Fatigue will also impact judgment. So when you’re tired and use a nearby (perhaps not the most stable) chair to put up decorations or reach for stored-away dishes instead of going to get a step ladder, fatigue is fueling your urge to take the shortcut and setting you up for a fall.  

Exhaustion is a tough human factor to tamp down, but we have you covered. SafeStart has a lot of great resources on what to do about fatigue, use them to help your workforce by including excerpts in your presentation. A great place to start is our blog post about how you can curb fatigue with some healthy snacking habits—a great reminder in this season of sweets, feasts and alcoholic drinks.

Unwrapping habits for a happy new year

The last fatigue example—using an unstable chair instead of a stepladder—is also a great setup to explain how complacency contributes to the risk of slips, trips and falls. If you’ve been using the nearby chair regularly, and nothing bad happened because of it, you’re likely going to disregard the risks of falling in favor of how easy it is to just use the chair instead of going to get a ladder or step stool. But the risk is still very real and preventable.

The same is true for new decorations or other slip, trip and fall hazards—the longer the hazard is there, the less likely you are to notice it. If you plug in your Christmas lights with an extension cord, you’re aware of the hazard the cord presents when you first put up the lights. The longer you’re around them without incident, the more complacent you become to the original hazard of the cord until you trip on it. Use an example like this in your digital display presentation to clearly spell out how holiday complacency can impact slips, trips and falls.

One way to fight complacency is to work on your habits. With New Year’s resolutions fast approaching, it’s not a bad idea to get people thinking about them now. Our guide How to Make Habits Stick can help. Use the information in this guide for your digital display presentation, print out copies or provide a link to the guide so everyone can work on their habits for an injury-free holiday.