Safeguarding Your Business by Safeguarding Your Employees This Winter

While we’ve looked at the Health and Safety issues around ice and snow before, including the role that professional gritting contractors can play in preventing accidents and keeping your business running, here we take a slightly broader look at the whole idea of what “safety” really means for your business and your workforce.

Health and Safety usually makes a business think of legal obligations and protecting employees and visitors from physical harm. In winter this will include taking precautions to deal with ice and snow to prevent slips and falls, and many businesses choose to hire professional gritting contractors to take care of this aspect for them – carrying out a full risk assessment for their premises, keeping all necessary paperwork required by Health &Safety regulations, and so on.

But we can also think about what “safety” means for your business from a slight different point of view – by thinking about ways that the business could be damaged as a business. After all, the livelihoods of many people may depend on your business continuing to trade successfully, so anything which damages that could have a serious impact on many people.

Safeguarding your business means thinking about and anticipating anything which could potentially damage your business, and putting plans or contingencies in place to minimise the chances of them happening, or to create alternative arrangements if the worst should happen.

Over the winter period there is an increased risk of damage to your business from two main sources:

Firstly, there is severe weather of all kinds, but particularly including ice and snow. Severe weather can mean employees not able to travel in to work, clients unable to attend meetings, and deliveries in and out slowed or stopped. No deliveries in can mean you don’t have the raw materials you need to run your business (e.g. factories, hotels, restaurants). No deliveries out can mean dissatisfied customers and a damaged reputation, which can impact on overall competitiveness. In addition, there may be a risk of injury to staff either travelling to and from work, or while on your premises. Of course, you can help to prevent accidents and keep things moving on your own premises by using gritting contractors, but you have less control about what happens off site.

Secondly, winter is a time when there is a greater chance of staff shortages due to illness or injury. Staff shortages can negatively impact your business in a number of ways, including an inability to fulfil customer demand and lower levels of customer service, both of which can damage customer trust and your hard earned reputation.

With these risks in mind it makes sense to anticipate them and put measures in place to minimise their effects. Here we suggest a number of actions that businesses can take to safeguard their business this winter.

1. Bad Weather Policy – While employees have a duty to try and attend work, even in extreme weather, equally they should not be made to feel pressurised to risk their own safety. An employee who is injured on the way to work as a result of severe weather may not be your direct responsibility, but they could still be off work for weeks or months, with consequent impact on your business. And if they can show that they were pressurised to travel, this could potentially give rise to a claim against you. While there is no clear legislation on the matter, it makes sense to prepare a “bad weather policy” for your company, making it clear what you expect of employees, and what they can expect of you in return, so that people aren’t struggling in unnecessarily. When there are warnings for “essential travel only”, think about what this should mean for your employees and whether having them struggle into work, potentially risking life and limb, is really essential for your business. A bad weather policy should make it clear when an employee is expected to attend work and under what conditions they are not. It should also make clear what happens if someone does not attend – whether they can make the time up later and the impact on their pay.

2. Show Flexibility – Rather than simply enforcing your rights as an employer, try to think of creative ways of minimising the risk to your workforce while also maximising resources to your business. It helps to look at the bigger picture, by focusing on keeping your business running successfully and keeping your customers happy, rather than worrying about whether your employees have worked every last minute of their contract. For instance, think about spreading the risk and allowing employees who live further afield, or who use riskier means of transport (e.g. car rather than train) to stay at home in severe weather. or think about creative ways that employees can make up lost time, without being penalised through loss of pay. Losing valuable and experienced staff because they feel disgruntled about how they were treated over the winter, could damage your business in the longer run.

3. Hire Gritting Contractors – There is little point in your employees struggling in to work only to find they cannot access your premises due to snow or ice, or suffering an injury as they get from their car to the building. Keep your business premises open and avoid injuries to staff by taking timely preventative action when icy conditions strike. The easiest way to do this is to hire professional gritting contractors who will actively monitor the local weather and arrange gritting for your site. This will prevent additional staff shortages due to illness being compounded by absences due to injury. By using professional gritting contractors rather than your own workforce, you are minimising the risk that gritting doesn’t happen because your own employees could not get into work.

4. Show Appreciation – If your employees are making the effort to get into work – perhaps leaving home much earlier than usual and getting home much later than usual as a result – think about ways you can be flexible in return. This might include allowing employees to start later or finish earlier in the day. If this isn’t feasible for operational reasons, think of other ways of recognising their efforts, perhaps by providing free hot drinks or snacks. A little team spirit during difficult times can be a great morale booster and motivate a team that is down on numbers to keep your business going.

5. Allow Working From Home – Think about any alternatives to employee travel that might help to keep your business going. For instance, can customer service employees work from home? If this needs certain software or technology to be installed to make this happen, work out how much it will cost and compare it to the cost of lost work days, lost orders or dissatisfied customers due to bad weather.

6. Stock Up – If possible, stock up on raw materials or other supplies needed to keep operations going, so you’re not so affected if there are a few days of disruption.

7. Plan Ahead – If your business involves moving physical goods, consider getting orders out earlier than planned, to minimise the chance of late orders.

8. Use Technology – If your business involves face to face meetings with clients, think about conducting meetings by phone or video conference instead, if they are agreeable. If your clients are out of your local area, make sure you keep them informed of local weather conditions and any severe weather warnings. They might not like having to postpone a meeting but will appreciate being warned of any problems ahead of time. It also enhances your company’s image of being organised and professional.

9. Keep Customers Informed – Tell customers about upcoming weather issues and tell them how you plan to manage the situation and specifically how you intend to deal with their specific requirements. This demonstrates your care for them and will help to ameliorate any reputational damage if you’re unable to deliver.

10. Plan Communications – Ensure you have a means to communicate with employees at home, so that you can assess their local travel situation and monitor things daily. For instance, email, phone, or perhaps posting status information on your company website for people to read. At the very least, give employees a point of contact to ring if they experience travel difficulties so at least you know if someone is able to come in or not. If you are using the internet to communicate, make sure that whoever is doing the updating can do so from home or won’t be affected by the bad weather (e.g. someone who lives close to work).

11. Help Employees Prepare – Encourage employees who are travelling in by car to ensure they are prepared for cold weather. This includes carrying essential items such as an ice scraper, a torch, de-icer, food, hot drinks and warm clothing. But it also includes ensuring the car itself is ready, such as a full tank of petrol, a good level of tread on tyres and so on. You could consider referring employees to the GOV.UK web page on the subject. It also makes sense to ensure they carry a mobile phone which is fully charged, either to call for help if required, or simply to keep in touch with the business (not while they are driving of course!). If a particular employee is so critical to your business that they need to travel in during severe weather, then it probably makes business sense to provide them with a temporary pay-as-you-go phone for this purpose, if they do not have one of their own.

12. Minimise Sickness - Minimise illness within your company by encouraging those with symptoms to stay away and avoid infecting everyone else. This is especially important in open plan offices where transmission rates have been shown to be much higher. You might also include encouraging parents of children with colds and flu to work from home, to prevent transmission of their children’s illness. As well as cutting down on the total number of people off sick, showing trust in your workforce to be honest about this will reap rewards in terms of loyalty and motivation down the line.

In short, taking a Health & Safety view can mean not only protecting yourself from the possibility of claims, but also help in practical ways to minimise the damage that bad weather can do to your business (fewer accidents and fewer days off sick), as well as helping to promote loyalty and motivation amongst your workforce.

Ice Watch are gritting contractors serving businesses and organisations throughout the UK. Call us today on 01728 633900.