Don’t Let Winter Trip Up Your Business
If your facility is in an area that receives snow and ice in the winter months, now is the time to make sure that Mother Nature doesn’t sabotage your business’ bottom line results. When conditions are threatening, you need to consider more than just how to get your lot cleared so you can open for business. You need to proactively protect yourself from accidents and fraud. The most important things you can do to protect yourself and minimize your risks are the very things many facility owners overlook.
What Does a Slip and Fall Cost You?
When a customer slips and falls at your facility, the hard and soft costs have a ripple effect. This ripple effect can impact your bottom line for years to come because it negatively affects your experience modification when it comes to your insurability as well as causes negative public relations with customers and the local media. If someone is seriously injured or particularly upset by an accident, the potential for spreading a negative message about you and your facility ripples through the local media, community, and the online social media space. It only takes minutes for someone to blast your facility and the name of your restaurant far and wide through their existing social networks. Costs associated with lost productivity and investigation on the part of your on-site and off-site employees also contribute to your losses.
What You Can Do to Minimize Your Risks
Some of the most important things you can do to understand and minimize your risks are those very things facility managers let fall through the cracks. As Danny Koontz, Director of Facilities Management at Ruby Tuesday, Inc. had to say, “Know your lease”. Every facility manager must have the answers to the following questions:
- Do you own or lease your property?
- What are your responsibilities?
- What are the responsibilities of the leaser?
For example, who is responsible for the parking lots? Who is responsible for the sidewalks? Where are the limits of each party’s responsibility? Don’t assume! Your responsibilities may differ depending on whether you are a standalone location or part of a strip or outlet mall. If you are part of a strip mall, the owner of the property may be responsible for clearing the lots, but as facility manager you are still responsible for clearing all the walkways and entrances to your facility. Get clear on your responsibilities to manage risks effectively.
The most important thing you can do is to understand your needs and subsequently minimize your risk and be prepared. One often overlooked but crucial task, according to Koontz is,”Teach your facility managers how to walk the restaurant from different places in the parking lot. Have them go to the outer extremes of the parking lots and then go into the restaurant.” He explained how most managers will see the obvious access points from directly in front of the building, but can often forget about the rest. What about the outer edges of the lot? Parking spots behind the facility? These are all points from which actual customers will have to access your facility and it can look entirely different when in the midst of a winter storm.
Another important element in Koontz’s arsenal is to ensure managers have all the supplies at the facility that they need to do some things themselves in the case of unexpected, quick storms or to manage conditions until the snow removal contractor can arrive or make a return visit (in the case of a significant weather event). These supplies include staples such as scrapes, shovels, and salt.
One example of a low cost, and simple risk management technique is using mats in tile foyers when faced with wet and slippery conditions. Some facilities are now choosing to implement more expensive options such as heated sidewalks and other heating elements to ensure that not only are hazards removed but surfaces are completely dry and clear. The visual impact plus the effectiveness of your hazard removal efforts go hand in hand.
More formal protections are also needed and include having adequate insurance, partnering with a professional to handle snow removal, and following clear, consistent protocol for any accidents that do occur.
Insurance Considerations
Winter slip and fall accidents fall under the umbrella of items covered by a general liability policy for your facility. According to Glenn Hatfield of The Hatfield Group, insurance costs are based on three things:
- Types of general hazards in an industry.
- The number of exposure units in your business. For restaurants that is typically a cost per $1,000 of sales.
- Experience modification. That is, the number of previous claims or losses on your account over the past years both in terms of the dollar and frequency of loss claims.
Notice that your ability to minimize risk and reduce claims is tantamount to your bottom line. According to Hatfield, “You usually gain $3 in productivity for every $1 you spend on risk management.” These savings come in the form of money saved on insurance premiums, reduced impact on your customer, less employee injuries on the job, money spent on deductibles, and time spent investigating, managing, or defending accident claims.
Insurance costs for general liability coverage can be wildly different across the same industry based on geographic location. Even within a very small geographic sample, the differences are significant. Hatfield provided the following averages and example to present some context. Consider the costs per $1000 of sales in the restaurant and hospitality industry for these nearby cities in Pennsylvania: Philadelphia $7.04 vs. Montgomery County (Philadelphia suburb) $6.24 vs. Harrisburg $4.71. Again, these are averages and can fluctuate based on insurance company and a business’ experience modification but even in this small sample there is a notable difference in cost for areas with similar weather patterns. Of course once you multiply these costs by your actual sales, you can see the magnitude of the swing and the importance of managing the risks you can control. This would be through preventative activities that reduce the probability and number of potential claims for your business.
Remember that from an insurance point of view, you are ultimately responsible for the any contractor work and the people on your property. Hatfield shared that even if a contractor may be primarily liable for a claim, it is common for both contractor and facility to be named jointly in a suit.
What to Look for in a Snow Removal Vendor
Unless you are only responsible for a small sidewalk into your facility, it is likely you’ll need to engage the services of a snow removal contractor. Here’s what you need to know to make sure you hire one you can trust to do the job well. Brian Walsh of Salix Springs Landscaping who serves clients with snow removal in the winter season offers his criteria of what to look for in a company:
- What is their track record?
- Talk to multiple references
- Do they stand behind their services?
You need your site to be open when you get there and you rely on your contractor to show good judgment. This is important to assess before the season starts because the middle of a snowstorm is not the time to discover the shortcomings of a vendor.
Choose your vendor well ahead of time; failure to do so results in increased costs for less comprehensive service. The best way to do that is to contract with a vendor before the winter season hits and get clear on who is responsible for what. The two most common ways snow removal vendors work are on a retainer basis where you pay a certain amount for the season regardless of the number of snow events or on a per-occurrence basis where you pay by the weather event.
Much like knowing your lease, you need to spell out all the details, responsibilities, and expectations in the contract. Key performance items include:
- Who will monitor the weather event and what are the facility’s policies for extreme weather conditions?
- Vendor response time (typically within 2-3 hours of the start of snow not to exceed more than 2 inches on the ground for midday events or lot to be cleared by first employee arrival for overnight events).
- What constitutes a snow event? If/how long will the vendor continue to monitor conditions at your site (typically first 24 hours after a storm)?
- What size is your facility? (This translates into the size of equipment needed for the job.)
- Will your job require a loader to stack snow or remove it from the premises to avoid snow melt hazards?
- Costs associated with any extra equipment required for the job.
- Will the vendor return automatically or is it the responsibility of the facility manager to contact them?
- Will the vendor return that night to finish clearing when the lot is empty?
Costs can vary quite a bit depending on the size and scope of the facility, but a recent estimate from a Ruby Tuesday facility provided by Koontz was approximately $1400/month for the season.
Successful snow and ice management is a partnership between facility manager and vendor. You can make this partnership successful by knowing where problem areas are, there things tend to puddle and freeze, and the location of downspouts, sprinklers, and other hazards on the property. You should review all potentially hidden obstacles with the vendor before any storms. The vendor must be aware of all boundaries and it is best practice to have the vendor do a dry run at your lot and stake any areas with hidden obstacles (curbs, sprinkler heads, etc.). As Walsh shared, “Preparation is critical as it is difficult to see during the course of a blizzard particularly for crews often working long, overnight hours while sleep deprived.” Vendors should always own up to and make amendment for any damage caused while plowing.
How to Sniff Out False Claims
You can never completely protect yourself from someone out to commit fraud, but there are some simple steps you can take to deter the dishonest from taking advantage at your expense. In these economic conditions, the sad reality is that some people are looking for a fall and the chance of a payout. There are some very basic things you can do to protect yourself against the unscrupulous.
Walsh shared “Never assume that people are going to exercise good judgment.” Be prepared for the customers who will wear stilettos in a blizzard and ignore the paths you have created for them. Another simple but effective technique which is also just plain good customer service is to make sure your wait and greet staff are paying extra attention to people going in and out of your facility during weather events. Have them help the elderly and others who need help navigating in inclement conditions. Remember if someone is paying attention to what is going on it is far easier to assess whether a slip, trip, or fall is a legitimate one.
“Have clear procedures of what happens in the case of an incident”, says Koontz. Everyone on staff should know what to do and who to call. Taking good pictures of what the facility and surroundings look like after an incident are crucial to helping determine whether a claim is bogus or legitimate.
Materials
Snow removal is only part of the equation. Clearing the lot and walks also typically requires a dose of traction or anti-icing material to clear and maintain. Factors to consider when choosing a material include performance, adherence to different surfaces, cost, storage considerations, availability, residues, and corrosivity[1].
While grit (finely crushed stone) or sand would seem to be fairly innocuous because of their noncorrosive properties, their very nature of providing traction leads to it being tracked into the facility and can clog water channels as it runs off the pavement. It is most useful when placed on top of ice for traction. According to Walsh, at least in the Mid-Atlantic, salt is used the most for several reasons. First, because of the litigious nature of society, more salt than is necessary is often used by contractors to err on the side of customer safety. In addition, salt gives the customer an instant visual impact since they can see it applied as it melts the ice to clean pavement. The rain will wash away salt and while this is better news in terms of residue in the facility, it does have a toxic environmental impact on plant and animal life.
The Concluding Forecast
While you can’t predict the winter weather forecast, you can prepare your facility for whatever elements come your way. As this article illustrates – start with the fundamentals (know your lease, contract terms, roles, and responsibilities) and secure the right snow removal vendor for your needs. Winter safety at your facility is truly a partnership, but done well it pays dividends to employees, customers, and your bottom line.
Notes:
[1] From the article “SAND V. SALT – Balancing Winter Safety with Environmental Protection” by E.A. Zimmerman, http://www.ourbetternature.org