Experience is the best teacher, even when it is a lesson you would have rather avoided. Once a situation occurs in your business that causes human injury, property damage, a damaged reputation, or loss of revenue, it's time to have some tough conversations. Once the fires have been put out, don't continue on with your head in the sand. It's time for some long-avoided proactive steps to avoid future problems from occurring.
Remember that you do not have to answer these questions on your own. Consider inviting other members of leadership and employees to a meeting to get their feedback on what the company can learn from the situation and what it can do differently moving forward. Ask yourself, and your leadership team, a list of comprehensive questions like, "How did this situation occur? What led up to it, and what can we do to keep it from happening again?" To get you started, we provide five examples of solutions that may arise from these brainstorming sessions below:
Employee cross-training
We used an example above of an employee being away from work for an extended time due to illness or injury. This situation can require pulling an employee from another area to cover the duties or hiring a temporary worker. Employee cross-training is the best way to prevent this scenario and minimize business disruption. When several employees know how to do someone else’s job, they can split the extra work between them until the sick or injured employee returns to work.
Checks and balances
Just as the federal government has three distinct branches to limit the power of all, your company should implement a system of checks and balances to prevent loss. For example, you could require two signatures on all payroll checks to prevent wage theft or embezzlement. Another example is having two managers check for the presence of hazardous substances before leaving work at the end of the day.
Health and wellness programs
Keeping employees well is much less expensive than dealing with revenue loss and increased health insurance costs when they are sick. Consider investing in benefits such as health club reimbursement or an employee assistance program to protect your most valuable asset, your employees.
Increased security
From installing more video cameras to preventing theft to upgrading computer security, your company and its employees can never be too safe. Improving security is especially important if a lack of security in certain areas or a breach caused the most recent situation.
Compliance
One of the simplest ways to reduce commercial risk is to ensure that the business and all its employees follow the rules, regulations, and policies expected of them. Federal and state governments subject employers to many compliance requirements such as carrying workers’ compensation insurance and paying into the unemployment system.
A crisis is no time to find out that your company is out of compliance in any area. The same is true with employees. Be sure to provide every employee with a copy of the company handbook and require that they read and sign it. Holding annual meetings to review what the company expects of them in general terms is also a good idea.
The above are just five suggestions. You should not feel surprised if your team comes up with many more ideas for how to prevent a similar disaster from occurring in the future. Once you have several ideas in place, make it a priority to implement the ones that make the most sense to you.
For more information about commercial risk assessment and prevention, download our free ebook, "Bombproofing Your Business" by clicking here or on the link below.
