If you run a business or own one, you may have a lot on your plate. You must handle employee hiring unless you have a hiring manager who does it. You might also try getting loans from banks or credit unions. You might find angel investors or venture capital firms that can fund your company’s expansion.
You must follow all rules and regulations, so you operate your business safely. Despite your best efforts, though, accidents sometimes happen. Maybe somebody dies while working for you on a job site, or they might severely injure themselves.
Let’s talk about how your business can rebound following one of these tragic accidents.
If someone hurts themselves while on your company’s job site, you should have insurance to pay for that. The injured worker should write a settlement demand letter to your insurance provider. When they ask for the company’s contact information, give it to them.
Writing settlement demand letters requires tact and diplomacy. Hopefully, your worker will use those when composing the letter. Regardless of how they sound, if your company caused the injury through negligence or unsafe conditions, your insurance company must pay for it.
The employee and your insurance company must settle things between them, and you can’t influence that situation very much. While your employee resolves that situation, though, you can take other actions that should help your company regain its positive reputation.
You might consider hiring a crisis management team. These entities help companies when something occurs that negatively impacts their public standing.
The team can advise you. They’ll tell you how to move forward. They might make out a press release you can read at a press conference, or you can post it on your company’s website if that seems appropriate.
They will tell you what to say on social media, what your higher-ranking employees should say, etc. Such companies know how to weather these storms, and you can use their help at this crucial time.
Presumably, you trained all your employees when you hired them. They should know your safety protocols and how to follow them.
After a fatal or serious accident, though, you should do a safety refresher course. You can conduct one yourself and have all your workers attend, or you might hire a company to do one instead.
You can review any safety protocols or adjust some that you feel need updating. You should be OSHA-compliant. If you must review any OSHA regulations for your work sites, do that. OSHA will also probably look at your sites. You must make sure you comply with any rules they have in place regarding your niche or industry.
You can also go through your work sites in the days and weeks after an accident and make sure your workers comply with the safety guidelines you have in place. Maybe the accident happened because your workers got careless. If so, that can’t happen again.
You might also remove any workers you think don’t take your safety protocols seriously. That starts at the top and goes down the ranks.
If you must fire a high-ranking employee for cause, do that. Don’t allow any slacking off regarding safety protocols at any level.
If you have any clients who express concern following the accident, talk to them about it. Tell them the actions you’re taking to make sure it does not happen again.
Act contrite, even if the accident occurred because of worker carelessness and not through any lax protocols. You must reassure your best clients this incident, while tragic, won’t happen again going forward.
It might take months or years before you regain public trust. It’s best to avoid hiding what happened and sweeping it under the rug.
Owning the incident and saying you’ve corrected any ongoing safety issues makes you seem more trustworthy. The public usually likes when you acknowledge these incidents and pledge they won’t happen anymore.
Don’t deny anything happened, and try to bury the story. In time, if nothing else bad happens, you should regain public trust and move on. If that doesn’t work, rebranding might become necessary. If that doesn’t work, closing down the company probably comes next. Ideally, things won’t end up that way.
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