Time to get smart this ‘Silly Season’

The festive season is a time to eat, drink and be merry. It’s a time for wrapping up the end of the year with bubbles, baubles and BBQ’s. It’s also time to run around like a headless chicken buying presents, cooking endless amounts of Christmas lunch, and fighting every man and his dog out on the streets. Tis the season to be jolly, and silly!

With silly season celebrations, however,  comes risk for business owners.

Here are a few pointers on how you can avoid unnecessary risks.

Visitors and Temporary Staff

Employers have to cater for the increased volume of work over the Christmas period, as well as workers taking time off to celebrate with friends and family. This means the need for temporary staff increases to fill the gaps. As with any new worker, they are likely to be unfamiliar with processes and safety can become an issue. Do not cut any corners with onboarding and inductions, ensure every worker, temporary or not, is up to date on workplace safety.

This is the case for visitors also, ensure all required badges, certificates and licenses are valid and presented before entering sites or workplaces. It may be a busy period, but the rules are still the same, keep everyone safe.

Summer Scorchers

In Australia, the summer period should come with additional warnings around weather. The risks for bushfires and storms increase at this time of year. The damage can be on a large-scale which can be difficult to deal with. As workers and services already stretched to capacity, it’s important to be aware that natural disasters can have a significant impact. For buildings, production or distribution services, its vital that all insurances are double checked and up to date. 

PARTAAY Time!

A high percentage of companies will host an end-of-year party in December. While this is a great time of year to celebrate with your team and look back at all the hard work they’ve achieved, it can also be a time when things can get a little messy.

It’s always great to see your workers let their hair down and enjoy the celebrations, but this is when things can turn a little sour, especially when alcohol is involved.

So what can you do to ensure that your Christmas bash doesn’t take a turn for the worst?

• Make sure food and water is provided throughout the event
• Provide taxi vouchers or transport arrangements so your staff can get home safely
• While your staff may be attending your party after hours, they’re technically at work, ensure everyone on their best behaviour
• Make sure you assign managers or team leaders to keep a watch on staff and to be ready to step in if someone goes over the line of appropriate behaviour
• Ensure the service of alcohol policy is strictly enforced
• Remember, your staff members are at work and the normal occupational health and safety rules still apply. If an employee sustains an injury, they are well within their right to lodge a workers compensation claim
• If events are held outside encourage workers to be sun-smart, applying suncream and wearing hats

Deadlines

As Christmas approaches, all teams and departments can become extremely busy due to the holidays creeping up. The last stretch to finalise all tasks and projects can mean working overtime in order to complete everything. Research has shown that workplace injury stats increase dramatically over the Christmas period, due to companies not taking the correct safety precautions in a rush to complete everything. Avoid putting yourself at risk regardless of the deadlines, as you will find the cost of workplace accidents is far greater.

Reputation

As the demand for products and services increases towards the end of the year, it’s important to ensure you are completing all deliveries, tasks and services within the timeframe given. To prevent angry customers/clients from leaving terrible reviews to your tarnish reputation, make sure that communications are clear and you are providing what you promised. Word of mouth is an extremely positive way of expanding your company and it tends to be the most trusted, you don’t want people speaking badly of their customer service experience.

Hackers and Ransomware

You don’t need to beef up security, but just be cyber smart. If you are still labouring around with local servers (let’s think about the cloud in 2018!), you are at risk of ransomware and hacks. A few measures to take to avoid this include:

• Make sure all your staff back up their files and computers
• Run anti-virus on the computers
• If staff are going on holidays, turn computers off
• Run a short training session on how to spot malicious emails

Other related blogs – Who are you killing just to hear the phrase – ‘We’re killing it!’

And as always, keep safe out there.

By Donesafe at Donesafe.com

For a paperless, jargon-free business safety solution that you can manage from your phone, click here to get in contact and ask about how you can try Donesafe for FREE or visit our features page to find out more.