Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Hey folks Rob McNealy here and today we are going to have a fun fun conversation. I am talking to Russ Ken’s ignore. He is the chairman and founder of the national floor Safety Institute. Now you’re thinking floors boring. I can tell you what I’m a floor nerd in my day life my day job. And I can tell you floors are fascinating. I know you don’t believe that. But I think after you listen to what some of the things Russell’s gonna tell you, you’re going to get really interested in floors and think about floors and a whole new way. So Ross, welcome to the show. How are you today?
Russell Kendzior – NFSI.org
Thanks, Rob. Doing good. Thanks for inviting me.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So I appreciate it. I haven’t talked to you in a while but I always get fired up when I talk to you because one, you’re a passionate guy. And when I talk to other passionate people kind of just gets me energized. And you know, I’ve been in the flooring world as an entrepreneur for a long time. And you know, I love working with you on things but for the audience that doesn’t know anything about floors and doesn’t know who you are. Can you Talk a little bit about who you are and a little bit about the National Floor Safety Institute?
Russell Kendzior – NFSI.org
Sure, I started founded in the national floor Safety Institute or nfsi, back in 1997. So we’ve been around a long time we started small was a small organization. We’re still small, but we’ve expanded our reach globally. The National floor Safety Institute is all about, well, safety, as our name suggests, for safety and our real reason for doing so. It’s our existence started with education, training, educating. You mentioned your Florida there’s a lot of Florida there’s a lot of people who are involved in the flooring industry, not necessarily on the safety side, but on the installation inspection manufacturing side that have an interest in floor safety because that’s the leading complaint that many of them get, in fact, much of the work you probably do are related to inspecting a floor after somebody slipped and fell or got hurt. And so that type of approach to floor safety has a lot value in terms of prevention. And that’s what the NFS is all about preventing slips, trips and falls, that’s our mission. We also do product testing, we certify products that are submitted to us like floor mats, floor covering materials, cleaning products, etc. So the nfsi is a third party independent testing organization. And of course, most people that know us know that we author The, the National, in fact, the international standards for slip trip and fall prevention for for the nfsi. It’s called the nfsi be one on one committee, and slip trip and fall prevention. And so everything I do, really has a direct connection to safety for safety, preventing slips, trips, and falls like yourself. I’m involved in litigation, I do a fair amount of work as an expert witness. I also have a podcast like you doing radio show. So I spend a lot of time talking about safety, as you have to do and the real point you made which is an interesting point is, you know, you think it’s boring, you know, most of the things we take for granted are boring. For example, when you go to your sink, kitchen sink and to get some water to, you know, give to your dog or just drink water, you assume you assume it’s safe, right? I mean, you’re drinking water, you don’t really know what’s in the water, but you make an assumption. The same is true for so many parts of our life. When you get into a car, you boarded an aircraft, you assume it’s safe, right? You’re You’re not gonna die, you’re not gonna have a malfunction that affects your life. And when it does, it makes the news. Well, that’s true and slips, trips and falls, most people can walk across floor safely. But unfortunately, many times people can’t. And often the cases that the floor itself was inherently dangerous, it was slippery had some substance on it that was slippery or otherwise created a hazardous condition and that’s when floor safety becomes kind of a really important factors when people start to to look at what are those things standards and how do you know a floor is safe? Or not? You can’t really tell Rob by looking at a floor whether or not it’s safe, you have to do some testing some analysis and that’s what you do. That’s what floor inspectors do walkway inspectors do or I guess we call you walkway auditors.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Some days. So, how big is this problem? Most people don’t think about a floor, you know, being dangerous. They don’t really think about I mean, I didn’t that’s like you’re saying about the water, right? No one just thinks they just think it’s safe. How big of a problem are slip and falls in the United States today?
Russell Kendzior – NFSI.org
Huge, absolutely huge. If you were to look at kind of the top 10 reasons for accidental death or fatalities, I mean, people died from cancer, lung disease, that sort of thing. But if you go down the list right after automobile crashes is false. One out of 103 people will die from the result of a automobile wreck. One out of 108 will die from a result of a fault. It’s massive 35 thousand people died last year as a result of a fall 8 million hospitalizations or emergency room visits. It’s the leading cause of emergency room visits in the United States as an accidental fall. It’s actually the leading cause of nursing home admissions as well. You can’t talk to anybody who has an elderly parent or is over the age of 65, who doesn’t have a significant interest in the subject because they’re the highest risk kind of like coronavirus. The older you get, the more elevated your risk becomes and we’re getting older societies getting older the baby boomers are retiring 10,000 a day. So if you kind of do the math, people are living longer. We have a very large population of elderly that’s the most likely victim of a slip trip and fall is an elderly person, elderly woman statistically. And so where we see the problem going is bad and progressively getting worse. And that’s why the subject of standards and and testing has become so important because in the past, in fact, prior to the nfsi there really weren’t any methods of testing floors specifically for safety where you can go out and measure the floors slip resistance and actually relate it to a degree of risk today. You can and those standards are, again, the ones that have been developed by the nfsi, as you know, because you do work as an expert witness that becomes of tremendous importance in matters involving litigation is testing and, and standards, what standard is there because ultimately, that’s what a plaintiff is. filing a lawsuit for is a violation of the standard of care. Well, what is the standard of care? Well, those are defined defined in great part by standards.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So since this is such a big, I would say epidemic in the United States almost on par with you know, you know, accident or auto accidents, right? Why don’t we hear about this I mean, if you look at you know, how, as the just mass, you know, markets views, slips and falls it’s always oftentimes done in a humorous way people laugh at them. It’s pranks, you know, funny videos. We laugh at that. But you don’t hear that about auto accidents. For instance, why do you think there’s a difference on how the the general public perceives, you know, you know, injury and death from slip and fall?
Russell Kendzior – NFSI.org
Probably because they just assume that if you go to a store to buy a floor that it’s it’s got to be safe that it complies with some standard there’s a an assumption. And sadly, they’re rarely if any manufacturers today and floor coverings are posting any information on their packaging or brochures or displays about the safety of their products. The short answer to your question, Rob is liability manufacturers of Florida’s see this is all downside. They run away from the subject they don’t want to engage. And the reason why is they don’t want to get dragged into the lawsuit. So if you were to slip and fall, God forbid at a local restaurant or local business And you get seriously injured. At big medical bills, you wind up filing a claim the claim elevates to a lawsuit. That’s the process. I mean, it’s kind of how it works, you people get hurt, they file a claim, the business owner sends it out to the insurance company. The insurance company sends a form letter saying no. Just that’s how it is. And so you have to file a lawsuit because you want to recoup your medical expenses. Most people that are filing lawsuits, robbers, you know, are not bad people. They’re not they’re not you know, scammers trying to rip off the insurance industry. They’re just people got hurt, and have lots of bills and they want their bills paid. That’s the truth. In fact, I wrote a book about it. In fact, I have a book called floor real life stories of a slip and fall expert witness where I just tell stories about the lawsuits I’ve been retained in. But with that comes liability for the manufacturer. So if XYZ floorcovering manufacturer does not test to a standard, if somebody gets hurt, as it relates to their product, they shrug their shoulders and say, well, wasn’t our fault. I mean, we didn’t do anything wrong. So if you try to sue a manufacturer of floors, the first thing they say is, well, what standard do we violate? We don’t have any. There’s no standard. So the last thing manufacturers of floors one are safety standards because the minute our safety standards and are held to manufacturing products to those standards, Rob, they become part of the litigation food chain. In my view, rightfully so, they should be they should be producing products and labeling them and testing them and providing that information to the consumer. If in fact, they really care about safety. But the reality is, they generally don’t they say they do. It’s kind of like a lot of companies will say safety’s number one. Well, that’s a marketing point. That’s, that’s a that’s a bullet point in a marketing strategy. But if you look closely at their safety record, it’s oftentimes are deplorable, even though they claim safety is the most important thing to buzzword. And so, safety to the consumer is assumed safety to manufacturers of floors are generally avoided,
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
well, looking at like the auto industry, right, you know, and I think I know a lot about the history going back to Ralph Nader and some of the other stuff back in the day with a Pinto and even seatbelts and things. But it seems to me there would be a marketing opportunity here for a more progressive floor manufacturer, like to become the Volvo, supposedly, of the flooring industry. I mean, do you would you agree that there is an opportunity there for a company that really started caring? is there is there an upside economically for these big companies if they decided to pick up that safety pro safety mantra?
Russell Kendzior – NFSI.org
Probably not. And as an analogy, to always answer that question, if you remember back to the tobacco crisis that we had in the United States where the tobacco industry the tobacco manufacturers were brought up to Capitol Hill to testify about the effects of tobacco is related to cancer and addiction, people were being addicted to cigarettes because the charge was at the tobacco has been genetically engineered to be addictive. And if you remember, Rob, all the CEOs of the largest tobacco manufacturers in the country stood there in front of our Congress and raise their right hand and swore an oath that they were unaware that tobacco was addictive. And they did not know that there was any genetic modifications to tobacco that was causing it to be more addictive, all of them lied. And that’s the process is if we all stand together, under a mutual lie that they may not even realize is a lie, because they tell themselves the lie so many times they believe it. I mean, manufacturers of anything, tend to think that their products are always safe. Even in lieu of any scientific evidence. They just believe it because, well, they believe it. It’s kind of like a religion to a company because remember, rob the manufacturers of products, primary motive is profit. They want to make money, they want to sell more of whatever it is, they make. The manufacturers tobacco did not have any interest in wanting to talk about cigarette safety. They would rather just live in the world of denial until one of the smaller tobacco companies, I think it was ligat broke ranks and they went rogue. And they started talking about Yeah, yeah, we we’ve been engineering tobacco to be addictive. And if you remember, Rob, this whole thing turned into a multi multi billion dollar settlement. Well, the same is true in floors. It’s the same approach. It’s, I guess, I guess a lot of these CEOs, Rob learned this when they, when they go to, you know, their Ivy League Business School, and how to camouflage problems, not really deal with the problems and floor safeties is just that. So you’re a manufacturer, let’s, let’s go back to your question. You’re a manufacturer of a floor and you say we now have floors that are safer. We have this whole line of really safety enhanced products. Well, they internally their attorney would say, Well, wait a minute, does that kind of imply that we’ve been making unsafe products? Would you like the safe Product today, or do you want to buy what we’ve been selling yesterday, which is millions and millions of square feet of the unsafe product, because that’s kind of what they’re saying, right is you want to save versus the stuff we’ve been selling you. So it creates this quagmire, the easier approaches to just have a unified standard by which all manufacturers of floor covering products can adhere to that’s created by a third party independent authority like an nfsi. Because that’s what we are. We’re a non for profit organization. We don’t manufacture anything. We’re a standards developer. So our motive and our mission is very, you know, simple. It’s about injury prevention. So if the manufacturers of florists simply adhere to a singular test method, a singular means of testing and labeling products, then that would benefit not only them but the consumer. But it might surprise you to know Rob when we petitioned the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to actually demand to force manufacturers of floors, flooring materials, to unify Li unified Test, and or I should say uniformly test and label their products to the nfsi standards. Every single manufacturer Rob opposed it. They opposed testing and labeling. In fact, one of the largest ceramic tile manufacturers in the in the world. His the CEO wrote a letter saying, Well, if the consumer wants to know how slippery a particular product is, all they need to do is rub their hand across the surface. Yeah, sure, that’ll work. And so they opposed it. They sent their armies of lawyers to stop it. Our petition failed and a very close vote two to three. And we’ll be back. We’ll be back because the consumer safety is of utmost importance to us and we know Rob with a two to three vote. All we need to do is swing one one vote the opposite way and it’s going to happen and they know that but I just want your listeners to know that the flooring industry is adamantly opposed. The floor safety standards and adamantly opposed to the NFL size work in this area that they kind of do everything they can to slow us down and stop us at every turn. So when you hear floor safety, you’re not going to hear that coming from a manufacturer at least in a genuine way. It’s just going to be more of a marketing buzzword that they used to imply that their products are safe.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So understanding as just a general consumer that maybe the floors aren’t all made the same. They’re not all you know, super safe out of the gate. What can an individual do to reduce their own personal risk of slipping fall?
Russell Kendzior – NFSI.org
Well, first of all use the right word risk, there is no such thing as a quote, safe floor or an unsafe floor. All walkways have some inherent risk. For example, if you get a floor wet, the risk of slipping goes up versus if the floor is dry. The type of shoes you’re wearing, will also affect the slip risk and so on. We want to do is, is get the consumer engaged and understanding that there’s an inherent risk in everything. In fact, that’s what I spend most of my time talking about on safety matters. my radio show is just that matters of safety. What what’s going on in the community that people have to understand from the minute you get up in the morning, and drink that cup of coffee that maybe was prepared with water that wasn’t as safe as you think using coffee beans at well may have been modified during the process of preparation that isn’t as good as you think or safe as you think every aspect of our life Rob, involves risk. We just want the consumer to know when you’re buying a floor, what is the inherent risk of slipping on that floor, meaning when it’s right out of the box, because sometimes some floors are unsafe, or have a very high level of risk, right out of the box, meaning you don’t even have to get it wet. It’s kind of slippery out of the box and you must I’m sure see this in your work as a as an inspector, right. I mean, you’re Going out looking at floors all the time and you’re seeing the same thing like How did this happen and we’re talking new floors right newly installed never walked on floors that are treacherous. And you say well how could that be? And by the way, Rob the last way you want to find out that the floor you bought was slippery when you yeah, you break your phone. So what happens?
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
So I like actionable things. So what would be if you had to say what would be a you know the thing that a consumer can control like, you know, shoe wear footwear? What would be what would shoes would you stay away from or what would you look for in a safety shoe or something that might be better for traction for an individual consumer that they can buy at a store?
Russell Kendzior – NFSI.org
It’s hard. It’s really hard when you go to the store to buy shoes you can find shoes that are labeled slip resistant. But there is no standard for the footwear industry either they they use the term slip resistant like an adjective it describes a benefit again A marketing term slip resistant meaning what slip resist on what surface for example, if you’re buying a pair of work shoes for, you know you work at a fast food restaurant, well that might offer a benefit in terms of slip resistance for floors that are wet or have grease or oil on them. But that choose slip resistance would not be appropriate for a work site like a like a construction zone where people workers are walking on steel and wood and dirt. And so the term slip resistant is really never been defined. It’s an it’s an adjective, it describes a benefit. So when the consumer goes to the marketplace to select shoes based on their slip resistance, it becomes extremely confusing. So nfsi will be releasing sometime probably early next year, they be one on one dot seven footwear traction test methods. So you can actually go to the store and many swimming manufacturers adopt the standard and select the shoe based on its traction level. related to your particular industry, whether that’s construction, food service, or just street shoes. But to back up your question a little bit, because it’s a very good question, the consumer is confused, they don’t know what’s going on, they assume everything’s fine until they get hurt. So manufacturers of floors, we would hope that they would have a change of heart. Don’t see that coming. Manufacturers of cleaning products have, you can go to the store and find products that have been tested. certified by the NFS is high traction, and so the consumer can start making their floors safer by adopting a better cleaning program cleaning products cleaning equipment, I think there’s four or 500 products that nfsi have certified including floor mats, footwear is coming, that’s going to be the next step. But if you really want to know what your exposure is, you need to have your floors tested. That’s the only way you really are going to know what what is your risk and it’s kind of like going to the doctor Rob if you go to the desk And they do a blood test, they’re going to tell you your cholesterol level, right? You get your blood pressure tested, that presents the risks that you as an individual might have. But you have to do that testing. So the doctor is going to take tests and then use that data to help you lead a better, healthier life. Well, the same is true for floor safety, slip and fall prevention. Start with the floor itself, if the manufacturer is not going to provide you that information, which generally they’re not test your floor, have somebody come out for a few hundred bucks and test the floor. They’ll they’ll tell you where you’re at using nfsi certified cleaning product, and then eventually, you know, footwear. What do you think the most dangerous shoe is Rob?
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Number one, I would say having personal experience falling in on either crocs or flip flops.
Russell Kendzior – NFSI.org
Exactly flip flops. In fact, I wrote about that in another book. Flip flops are the most dangerous and the most popular form of footwear and probably the world. I mean, go Back to the Egyptians. But flip flops to foam sold flip flops that have virtually no tread pattern are just treacherous. And on any surface wet or dry on a wet surface when somebody is walking in, say to a grocery store and they’re wearing flip flops and there’s a wet spot on the floor, you’re basically wearing surfboards. I mean, you hit that wet spot and you’re going down. And so very, very popular. But also the most dangerous form of footwear is, is flip flops. A lot of people will say high heeled shoes, they’ll say, Well, you know women wearing high heels. I don’t know if I’ve ever been ever retained in a case and I’m talking about 900 retentions in the last 25 years where somebody alleged that a high heeled shoe was in and of itself dangerous. women know how to adjust their gait. They walk differently in a high heeled shoe, but you take that same woman around and put her in a pair of flip flops, and it’s a different story. And again, flip flops are everywhere. I mean everybody wears them. You can go to the local grocery store, or you know, CVS, Walgreens and buy them for 99 cents a pair.
Russell Kendzior – NFSI.org
There’s so abundant.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
Invest in your footwear. Russ, I do appreciate your time. And I’ve learned a lot, like I always do when I talk to you and I’m sure audiences has to where can people find out more about you?
Russell Kendzior – NFSI.org
Wow, well, I’m kind of all over the world of floor safety. My company. My private consulting company is called traction experts. I got a radio show called safety matters, which is growing across the country. It’s here in Dallas, It’ll soon be in Chicago and other parts of the country so they can tune in to that they can listen to my podcast, the slip and fall guy and actually listen to the past recordings from the radio show, or of course to the national floor Safety Institute, which is nfsi dot o RG. So reach out to me, I’d love to hear from them. And I’m a safety guy. So my my motive is to keep people safe.
Rob McNealy – RobMcNealy.com
And I appreciate that. Hey folks, I will have all of Ross’s information, including links to his books up at Rob McNealy Comm. Make sure you subscribe to our podcasts and check us out on library and YouTube and you guys have a great day.