The past several weeks or so haven’t been easy on many people up and down the eastern seaboard, as winter weather has repeatedly dropped snow on areas ranging from Maine to Georgia just days apart. This is especially true of small businesses, which may have significant hassles even beyond a suffering bottom line.
For example, in Raleigh, N.C., where residents aren’t exactly used to being blanketed with snow let alone large quantities of it, the number of transactions processed by the emerging payment giant Square in that area, specifically, plunged 75 percent in a single week, according to a report from the Triangle Business Journal. That’s entirely as a result of the snow, and in fact, when it was falling at its heaviest at 6 p.m. on a Thursday, transactions were only coming in at about 3 percent of the rate seen at the same time a week earlier.
How can owners prepare for these issues?
Of course, there’s no way for entrepreneurs to make sure that people are coming out to their stores when it comes to adverse weather conditions. But at the same time, companies that don’t rely on actual foot traffic should probably have contingency plans in place so that business can continue as normally as possible. The first and perhaps best way in which this may be possible is by simply making sure workers have the ability to do as much of their jobs as possible from home. This will help to reduce the likelihood of an employee getting into an accident or otherwise running into trouble when road conditions may be a little less than ideal.
Making sure everyone knows their options for dealing with such issues can go a long way toward not only keeping things running smoothly, but also ensuring that workers are happy; after all, it’s very likely that many people may not want to go to the trouble of heaving into the office when the roads are a little more dangerous than normal.
When bad weather hits, owners may also want to look into the ways in which their companies are protected by small business insurance. Assessing needs and potentially finding more affordable commercial insurance and other types of coverage could end up saving companies thousands of dollars per year, which can then be put toward other aspects of a company and make it run more smoothly.
