For many businesses, winter, and the harsher weather it brings, can mean a few additional challenges. So, if you don’t want to be caught out by winter this year, it would be a good idea to start making business plans for the season as soon as possible.
With that in mind, here are a few things you can do now to plan for the winter ahead:
Make a plan
Sit down with all your employees and talk over what can and should be done if the winter weather affects things like employees’ abilities to get into work on time or the supply chain that ensures you have enough products (or not) on the shelves. Make as many contingencies as you can, whether that means installing bunded oil tanks to ensure your building always has heat, with as little wastage as possible, or ensuring at least some of your employees can work from home should the need arise.
Deals with the legalities
Depending on where you are located, there may be employment rules and regulations that lay out what can and cannot be done if there are severe weather conditions. Reading up on these rules will help to ensure that you treat your employees fairly if the winter is especially harsh, in terms of paid and unpaid leave, flexible working to help them get home at the safest times, and stuff like that. The sooner you know what you can and cannot do, the easier it will be to make provisions for all eventualities.
Work on a winter marketing campaign
Why is this important? If your business is physical, rather than being run online, a harsh winter could potentially see you getting fewer feet through the door because no one likes to go out and about when the weather is bad. However, if you can give them a good reason to do so, whether that be an offer they can’t resist or a spectacular marketing campaign that makes them think they absolutely need your product, you can hopefully avoid the winter downturn and still make a fair amount of money.
Improve your IT infrastructure
If you have the kind of business where people can work from home, chances are you’ve already improved your IT infrastructure due to the challenges of the pandemic. However, if you have not yet ironed out all of the bugs and made it easy for your employees to work from home, that is something you should definitely get into place before this winter, especially with the added challenges of covid. By doing so, you can let people work from home when needs be, without it impacting your business in a negative way.
Make good hygiene a focus
This winter is likely to be challenging on the health front due to the fact we will, again, have vivid to deal with along with flu and the usual winter bugs that we’re used to, which is why you should be really pushing good hygiene practices on your staff. Make sure there is always hand sanitiser and masks available and encourage people to use them if you don’t want to see your business negatively impacted.
Winter can be challenging, but you can get your business through it.