Avoid disaster: Tips to improve safety at your retail store

If you work at a retail store, you’re all-too-familiar with the chaos that is the holidays, Memorial Day Weekend, or pretty much any time there’s a big sale. People rush around to do their shopping and it feels like there isn’t enough time—or hands—to worry about keeping everything neat and tidy. When there are customers packed into the store, safety might take a backseat. However, it’s vital to enforce safety over speed and to always keep the floor clear.

There are a few things you can include in your training to make sure that your retail store stays safe both for your customers and your employees. The following are some safety tips that could come in handy around your store.

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How to keep your family safe from the summer sun

When you were growing up, your parents may have hounded you about putting on sunscreen. At the time, sunscreen might have seemed like an annoying, greasy nuisance, but now that you’re grown up with kids of your own you understand the importance of sun safety. Sunburns and overexposure to the sun could cause skin cancer, which is the most common type of cancer in the United States. And make no mistake—skin cancer is serious stuff. It can be fatal. The CDC says that ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun can damage your skin in as little as 15 minutes.

With summer rapidly approaching, it’s crucial that your family makes sun safety a priority. Running around outside, swimming, playing sports, and working outside leave you vulnerable to those invisible (but very scary) UV rays, which, as we said, can cause some serious damage to your skin. To help you keep everyone sun-safe this summer, we’ll go over some tips for sun protection.

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What you need to know about flood insurance for your business

Nothing is impervious to water. Somehow we don’t think about how destructive little raindrops can be. If there’s a bad storm we think about trees falling, hail pelting windows and cars, branches being thrown around like twigs – you know, the usual. But somehow we forget about the water.

Flooding can happen for a variety of reasons, not just from heavy rain or even hurricanes (although both can create some pretty serious deluges.) Mudslides can cause flooding. So can snowmelt that runs into rivers. There’s also the possibility that nearby development and construction can change the land so that it can’t drain like it should. At any rate, when your building is doing its best impression of a swimming pool, it doesn’t really matter what caused the flooding in the first place. You just want the water out of there.

While we can’t completely shut Mother Nature and her swamps of water out, being prepared can help reduce the damage your business could face from a surprise flood. We’ll explain the basics of commercial flood insurance, but we’ll also go over some ways that you can bolster your business’s defenses against flooding.

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How to keep your pets safe during a disaster

Your four-legged friends are members of your family. Your cat or dog is your buddy, your companion. They’ve snuggled their way into your heart, and the thought of something happening to them during a disaster is devastating. Your pet relies on you to take care of them and to provide for them, and this is even truer during a disaster or if you have to evacuate your home.

To help you keep your pets safe, we’ve put together some tips to follow if you ever have to weather a natural disaster or another emergency with your pet.

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How to make your business fireproof

No business owner wants to consider the possibility of their business going up in flames. If your business were to be burned to the ground, the financial burden would be staggering. You’re facing not only the costs of rebuilding the premises itself but also the cost of your lost income and profits. Most businesses that face a fire don’t end up reopening after the fact. The good news is that there are some steps you can take to lower the chances of that happening.

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Tips for preparing your family’s disaster kit

No one wants to think about what would happen if a disaster or hurricane were to hit their home, but being prepared is everything. To help your family get through a disaster, there are a few things you need to do, including preparing an evacuation plan and packing up a disaster kit. If you’re wondering where to start when preparing your disaster kit, we’ve got some things for you to keep in mind as you assemble it.

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How to avoid wrongful termination lawsuits

Sometimes you have to fire people. It happens within every company. It might be because the employee consistently causes problems, or it might be for financial reasons. Either way, it’s not a comfortable situation to be in. Emotions run high. Losing a job can be a devastating blow to an employee, and if they feel that they were wrongfully fired they could bring charges against your company.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to fire an employee, and leaving someone out in the cold with no given reason is generally not the best way to go. To avoid being on the chopping block of a wrongful termination suit, there are a few things you need to keep in mind and a few employment practices you can implement.

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Tips for staying safe when traveling abroad

With summer just around the corner, you might be planning a grand overseas adventure. Traveling and seeing new places can be a very impactful experience, and having the opportunity to absorb a culture that’s not your own is exciting. However, it’s important to stay safe while you’re traveling. You don’t want a disaster to ruin your painstakingly planned trip, right?

There are a few things you can do before your trip and after you arrive at your destination to make sure that you have the best trip humanly possible.

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How to handle a data breach in your company

Your clients entrust your business with their personal information on a regular basis. You swipe credit cards, make sales, take phone numbers or addresses, and might need even more sensitive information at times. We’d like to think that our computer systems and IT are secure, but they’re not. They can come under attack at any time, and if they fall you need to know how to face the consequences.

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How you can take a home inventory using GoogleDrive

Recently we talked about why home inventories are vital when it comes to home insurance. Creating a home inventory helps you ensure that you have enough coverage for your home, and it makes filing a claim for fire or burglary much easier. Making a list of all of the belongings in each room of your house might sound tedious, but we’ve got a suggestion for a more tech-friendly way of conducting your home inventory.

If you’re familiar with GoogleDrive, you know that it’s an online file storage system that you can access from any internet-connected device. Anything you create or type into a Google document (simply called a GoogleDoc) within Drive is saved, and it’s a way to avoid keeping your all-important and all-inclusive inventory in your home where it could be destroyed.

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