When winter comes, criminals don’t hibernate like bears. Why? The criminals are busy taking advantage of opportunities to further their unscrupulous desires.
So there are several important precautions to prevent crime in snowy weather.
You need to safeguard vehicles in your parking lot, your warehouse or distribution facilities, and your truck drivers on the road.
Facility security
To guard against criminals breaking in your vehicles and facilities:
— Brush snow off equipment, gates, prohibitive signs, and especially lights and security cameras.
— If you don’t have dusk to dawn lights, adjust timers on lights because your facilities will be dark before 5 p.m.
— Provide an escort service for vulnerable employees who are coming to work or leaving work in the dark.
— Long before the snow season, trim your shrubs to prevent criminals from hiding on your property to steal products or to accost your employees.
— Keep snow banks low for the same reason.
— To prevent a criminal from climbing your fence, don’t plow snow against it.
— Maintain doors and door frames so they don’t warp. Warped doors and door frames make it easy for criminals to use crowbars to break into your facility.
— Check all doors to see that they lock and close properly in freezing temperatures.
“At the end of the day, the goals are simple: safety and security.”
-Jodi Rell
Transportation security
Your drivers have enough to worry about when they’re driving on snow and ice. They also have to take precautions against criminals.
Here are some driving-security tips:
— Before and after a snowy season, check all truck locks for rust from the salty roads.
— When you anticipate freezing weather that cause sticky locks, make de-icer available for drivers.
— Your policies should prevent drivers from leaving their cabs unlocked and engines idling just to keep the cabs heated.
— Warn drivers to stay alert at trucks stops. Even quick visits to dart inside a truck stop can mean danger from criminals on dark, freezing nights.
The bottom-line: In essence, don’t allow employees to take shortcuts in frigid weather.
From the Coach’s Corner, more tips:
Supply Chain Management: 6 Tracking and Expediting Tips — With consumers expecting more merchandise at a faster rate, retailers and suppliers are increasingly under pressure. From supplier to manufacturer to retailer and logistics, there are keys to optimal supply-chain management.
Best-Practices in Protecting Your Supply Chain from Natural Disasters — As a manufacturer, you know the importance of protecting your supply chain for your company’s future. So you might be interested in an academic study — lessons from the earthquake that resulted in a tsunamis and nuclear catastrophe in Japan.
Tips for Preventing Robberies and What to Do If You’re Hit — As a business owner, you don’t like to think about the frightening prospect of being robbed. You could lose money and merchandise. More importantly, you and your employees could be severely hurt or even killed. So it’s strongly advisable to do an analysis of your store’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Then take the necessary precautions.
Manage Health Costs by Improving Your Culture 3 Ways — Is your company saddled with high health costs? By improving your culture in three ways to minimize stress, your company will improve performance and long-term sustainability.
Worker Safety Tips to Save on Workers’ Comp Insurance — Nearly 4 million U.S. workers are hurt annually on the job at a cost to companies in excess of $179 billion. To promote safer workplaces by reducing injuries — resulting in higher productivity — here are safety tips to save on workers’ compensation insurance.
Legal HR Issues? Best Practices in Workplace Investigations — As an employer, one of your biggest nightmares can be issues involving your employees. There can be many reasons to conduct an investigation. “Action expresses priorities,” said Mohandas Gandhi. So you should act quickly.
HR Tips to Avoid Legal Hassles with Immigration and Customs Enforcement –This includes strategies on how to respond to an ICE audit. Employers have been having problems with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE served 3,004 notices of inspection (NOI) in fiscal 2012.
“At the end of the day, the goals are simple: safety and security.”
-Jodi Rell
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