During winter, you experience adverse weather conditions like high winds, extreme cold, and icy sidewalks and roads. As a small business owner, you want to remain open regardless of how the season turns out. That means adequate preparedness to ensure your business, property, and staff remain safe. Preparing for winter means doing all possible to prevent damage and accidents to your business premises.
While the aim should be to prevent disasters, it may be impossible to avoid them sometimes. Be prepared to respond to emergencies, such as evacuating if the building becomes unsafe. Additionally, have enough emergency supplies like water, food, flashlights, and a whistle. Here’s a guide on how to prepare your small business for winter weather:
1. Assess the Winter Weather Hits You Need to Worry About
Although many small businesses face snowfall as a significant winter weather threat, others worry about freezing pipes, property damages, and power outages. By assessing the possible threats, you can know the winter weather that hits you.
Examine car accidents, structural damages, road closures, power outages, snow falling on your premises, frozen water in pipes, and electrical fires. Identify the ones that threaten you most and prioritize them. If you don’t know the winter warnings to prepare for, you can contact your local council or check the local winter warnings for a guide on the threats to prepare for.
2. Provide Your Staff with the Right Tools and Information for the Winter Weather
Professionals in the trade industry advise business people to provide their teams with the right tools for the right tasks. That also applies when planning for disasters. Since you will not have time to go to the stores to purchase the supplies needed when a winter storm happens, the best thing would be to buy the tools your team will need before the disaster strikes. The tools include:
• Whatever you’ll need for fixing minor property damages, such as construction tools and replacement parts.
• First aid kit
• Things you’ll need to keep your electronics safe from the cold weather since it can damage them permanently
• Safety accessories such as a space heater, emergency lighting, fire extinguisher, and generator
• A radio to keep you informed about winter storm warnings
3. Keep a Record of Your Inventory
You might find yourself in a situation whereby your roof collapses because of bad winter weather and destroys all your store’s contents. Even though you may have insurance, they will only cover your stock if you provide accurate details. Keep a clear inventory record to avoid being in such a situation.
4. Update Your Insurance Coverage
The Texas Department of Insurance reported that insurance firms paid over four billion dollars as compensation for claims due to power failure in the state’s grid. While such funds can’t reverse a disaster, they play a significant role in compensated businesses. Every business that faces winter threats needs to have proper insurance coverage.
Insurance funds might save your small business from bankruptcy if the winter weather damages your premises or forces you to close the business. It would be best to check your Product Disclosure Statement to confirm whether your business is adequately covered for extreme winter conditions. You should also check the PDS to compare insurance options and ensure you have the right one.
5. Plan for Post-storm Snow Removal
The above tips guide you in surviving the harsh winter weather. However, if you have ever experienced a snowfall that damaged businesses, you understand the challenge of cleaning up the post-storm mess. That is the reason why you should prepare in advance.
Create a plan on how you will conduct the post-storm clean-up. The plan should include the logistics involved, contract commercial snow removal services, hire contractors who will repair the damages, and think about how you will pay all of them. You should include the plan you create in your business plan and ensure your investors, employees, and coworkers understand it.
While it may be impossible to control the severe winter weather, you can control the measures you take to prepare your business for disaster. You can only prepare your small business for winter weather by assessing the potential threats before they happen, preparing your staff, keeping a record of your inventory, updating your insurance coverage, and planning a clean-up in advance.
