Looking for an easy, inexpensive way to prevent injuries in your workplace? Consider replacing old manually retractable and fixed-blade utility knives with a concealed blade version.

They typically cost less than $3 a piece, and can prevent serious lacerations. As a side benefit, they also help prevent damage to the contents of boxes.

You can purchase these types of knives through Martor , Uline and many other retailers.

When it’s snowy and icy outside, it takes the right moves to avoid a winter slip-and-fall injury in a parking lot. Show your employees this lighthearted video to remind them how to walk safely in slippery conditions.

Avoid winter slips and falls: Icy parking lot safety

For more winter prevention resources and information, visit SFM’s winter slip and fall prevention page.

What do Midwesterners dread most about nasty winter weather? Driving in it.

Getting across town during a snow or ice storm can be stressful, time-consuming and dangerous.

What can you as an employer do to keep your employees safe and your organization functioning when dangerously bad weather hits?

There’s not always an easy answer, but the first step is to have a plan.

Why you need a severe winter weather policy

A severe weather policy is a critical component of your business’s overall emergency preparedness and disaster recovery plan.

It’s not uncommon for state departments of transportation to advise against travel due to severe weather. Whether it’s poor visibility or ice, unsafe road conditions could keep your employees from the office.

Schools have decades of experience in communicating closures to keep staff and students out of treacherous weather conditions. They’ve established clear plans on who makes the decision to close, by what time, and how to notify people.

But calling a snow day isn’t just for schools.

It’s essential for employers of all types to be prepared for a disruption to normal business operations because of severe weather. Of course, not everyone can shut down during inclement weather. Hospitals, for example, need to be staffed 24/7. You may have critical operations to keep running.

How can you get prepared? With a snow day policy.

Before the snow flies: Develop a snow day policy

The time to plan for bad weather is before a storm hits. Employees will have many questions that should be addressed in an inclement weather policy, like in this example policy .

“The inclement weather policy must set expectations, present a balanced approach to compensation, mitigate risks for both employers and employees, and present a fair solution for emergency situations,” writes Susan Heathfield .

Eight items to consider covering in your snow policy

Following are items you should think about covering in your inclement weather policy:

• How you will communicate a closure to employees — phone call, text, email, broadcasting system, etc.
• Your expectation that employees use caution while entering and leaving work in poor weather conditions
• Your intention to monitor the weather forecast, as well as any specific conditions that will trigger a closure (snowfall amount, temperature, electrical outage, loss of heat, declaration of weather emergency, etc.)
• Instructions that traveling employees are not to drive in unsafe conditions, as well as a reminder of your prohibition of cell phone use while driving
• Expectations about what happens in the event of closure, such as whether employees should work from home
• Compensation in the event of a severe weather scenario, keeping in mind local, state and federal laws
• How you will notify customers, clients or vendors of a closure — notice on your website, voicemail message, email, etc.
• The expectation in the event of a mid-day closure that employees are expected to leave immediately

Let’s look at a few of these items in more detail.

How to define a weather emergency

When developing your plan, consider setting specific criteria about the amount of snowfall, road conditions and temperatures that may trigger a closure. This will keep your employees from wondering about a snow day each time the snowplows come out.

Blizzards aren’t the only weather situation that may require closing. Below-freezing temperatures and wind chills as low as -60 degrees prompted the governor of Minnesota to close schools statewide in January of 2014.

Rely on an expert like the National Weather Service for weather conditions and to your state’s department of transportation for road conditions. You may look to your local school district as a guide. Know the terminology for different winter weather alerts, advisories and warnings.

Expectations for employees

If you’ve set up the ability for workers to telecommute or work remotely, do you still expect employees to work if your office is closed due to weather? What if the company does not close, but an employee would prefer to avoid traveling? Remote work options could allow them to avoid taking a personal day.

As with other parts of your snow day plan, communicate clear expectations with your employees if you expect them to work remotely if they cannot make it into the office. Prepare your IT infrastructure for a spike in activity if many more employees than normal try to access the remote work system.

Your weather emergency plan also needs to factor in maintaining any business-critical operations. If a vital employee cannot make it to work, do you have a backup plan?

Compensation

Keep in mind the business implications of voluntarily closing because of the weather. Even if your employees aren’t working, they may still be due a paycheck. Check your state and federal regulations for rules around paying exempt and non-exempt employees in various bad weather scenarios .

By developing a snow day policy ahead of time, you’ll be prepared to make a thoughtful decision before a storm hits, and you’ll help your employees stay safe.

Key: Be proactive and build a strong safety culture

An inclement weather policy can formalize your stance on employee safety during winter weather conditions, but ultimately, employees must also make decisions about their own safety and use their best judgment about whether they should be driving.

That’s why it’s important to foster a workplace culture where employees know you care about their health and safety and wouldn’t punish them for prioritizing their safety over work.

In the same vein, you can be proactive by starting to plan as soon as you hear a big storm is coming. You can encourage employees to rearrange their schedules in advance to avoid driving during the worst of it. This might mean leaving a day early to get to an out-of-town meeting, doing a delivery early or simply rescheduling an offsite meeting.

Strategies like this can keep your organization functioning while also keeping your employees safe.

This is not intended to serve as legal advice for individual fact-specific legal cases or as a legal basis for your employment practices.

This post was originally published on January 18, 2017 and updated on November 7, 2018.

Have you ever been driving home late at night and had to fight to keep your eyes open?

Or maybe you’ve felt your attention drift while driving to work in the morning?

It might seem commonplace, but driving in these situations can be dangerous. Even if you’re not falling asleep at the wheel, drowsy driving poses a risk to your life and others.

Driving while drowsy can cause drivers to pay less attention to the road, slows their reaction time and affects the ability to make good decisions. It also impairs information processing and short-term memory and decreases performance, vigilance and motivation.

Accidents caused by drowsy driving are most common late at night and early in the morning, with early afternoon also being a peak time for drowsiness. Most crashes result from failure to brake or avoid an accident. It’s also common for drivers to veer off the road.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, drowsy driving causes 100,000 crashes, 71,000 non-fatal injuries and 1,500 deaths per year. However, these are low estimates as drowsy driving can be difficult to track. It’s thought that up to 6,000 fatal crashes each year may be caused by drowsy drivers.

Underlying causes

Drowsy driving occurs when a driver is sleepy or fatigued. Excessive drowsiness is usually caused by sleep loss from restriction or too little sleep. This can result from interrupted or fragmented sleep or chronic sleep debt. Other factors include undiagnosed or untreated sleep disorders, the use of sedating medication and consumption of alcohol when already tired. These factors can compound on one another, and any combination of them increases the chances of causing a motor vehicle accident.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, people who sleep six hours a night are twice as likely to be involved in a drowsy driving crash than those sleeping eight hours or more, and people sleeping less than five hours increase the risk to four or five times.

Commercial drivers who operate vehicles such as tow trucks, tractor-trailers and buses have increased risk of drowsiness. Workers with long, rotating or night shifts, such as doctors, nurses, pilots and police officers, have a higher risk of drowsy driving, especially when driving home.

Warning signs

Warning signs include:

• Yawning
• Frequent blinking or rubbing your eyes
• Blurry vision
• Heavy eyelids or inability to keep eyes open
• Nodding off or trouble keeping your head up
• Difficulty remembering the past few miles or missing your exit
• Drifting from your lane or hitting a rumble strip on the side of the road
• Ending up too close to nearby cars or tailgating
• Daydreaming, difficulty focusing or wondering and disconnected thoughts

If you experience these signs, pull over to rest or change drivers. It’s not enough to just roll down the windows or turn up the radio.

Prevention

There are many ways to prevent drowsy driving:

• Get enough sleep

At least seven hours is the recommended amount of sleep for the average adult.

• Develop good sleeping habits

Go to bed and get up at the same time every day and make sure your bedroom is dark, quiet, relaxing and at a comfortable temperature. Remove electronic devices from your room, avoid large meals, caffeine and alcohol before bed and get some exercise.

• Talk to your physician about treatment options if you have a sleep disorder

Pay attention to potential symptoms, such as snoring or regularly feeling sleepy during the day. Many people with obstructive sleep apnea and narcolepsy go untreated.

• Avoid drinking alcohol or taking medications that make you sleepy

Check the label on medications or talk to your pharmacist. Common sedating medications include antidepressants, cold tablets and antihistamines.

• Avoid driving late at night or alone

Share driving with other passengers on long trips, pull over at rest stops and take a short nap or arrange for someone to give you a ride home after working a late shift. On long trips, schedule breaks or switch drivers every 100 miles or 2 hours.