How to Help Your Small Business Recover After a Devastating Accident

Small business owners form this nation’s backbone. While some companies rise to international prominence like Google or Amazon, many families and individuals like shopping at the small mom-and-pop stores in their town. Even if you’re doing online shopping rather than going to a brick-and-mortar store location, you might feel good about giving money to an independent business rather than a huge conglomerate.

If you own a small business that has a devastating accident on the premises, though, that might shake you up, and the rest of your employees as well. You might not know how you’ll recover. A worker may also look into filing a lawsuit following a workplace injury. That can hurt you financially if a jury finds you liable or you pay a hefty settlement to that individual instead.

Coming back from such a situation might challenge you like never before, but you can usually do it if you can find the fortitude and tenacity within yourself. Let’s talk about how your company might recover following one of these incidents.

What Kinds of Accidents Can Happen at Work or Off the Premises?

First, let’s talk about the kinds of accidents that can happen, either on the premises of your business or away from them. Maybe you have some machinery in your business that you must operate every day. If you make physical products, for instance, perhaps you have an assembly line with machines and workers who run them.

One of those machines might malfunction and injure a worker. Maybe it could even explode or cause a fire or a smoke situation.

A worker might fall, hurting themselves. Perhaps they’ll even break some bones. A vehicle you work with, like a payloader or some other piece of construction equipment, might malfunction and cause both injuries and property damage.

Away from your place of business, maybe one of your vehicles causes a serious accident with injuries or deaths while delivering your physical products. If anything like this happens, you must look at your small business insurance policies. Most small businesses must have multiple kinds of insurance in place, and now those will come in handy if someone sues you and holds you legally liable.

You Can Address Your Workers

After you have paid out the claim from a worker or settled the lawsuit with a plaintiff who your business harmed either directly or indirectly, you might notice low employee morale. You can expect that. If one of your products hurt someone, a machine malfunctioned and caused serious damage, or something similar, you might have a lot of employees who will question continuing to work for you.

You must call a company-wide meeting and talk to them. Sending an email or reading an announcement via a PA system won’t work in this instance.

You must write a speech that explains what happened and gives reasons for why it is not going to occur again. You should also end on an encouraging note. You have to project a positive attitude. You must convince your workers that you have fixed the problem and that now they’re safe from further danger.

You Can Share a Message for Your Customers on Social Media

If your customers heard about what happened, you will probably have to address them as well. Presumably, your small business will have a presence on social media. Nearly all modern companies do these days, no matter their size.

On the social media platforms where you have a presence, you must tell your customers something similar to what you told your workers. You can explain that you addressed the problem or issue that caused the accident, and it will not happen again. You can give them concrete examples of corrective actions you have taken

Transparency matters in these situations. So does accepting responsibility and not trying to pass the buck. You must show that you are turning a page and convince your customer base that they should stay with you and not go to a competitor during this difficult time.

You Can Change the Policy That Caused the Accident

Next, you must look at the details surrounding the accident itself. You must ask yourself what caused it and take any specific actions necessary to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

That might involve removing a faulty piece of equipment. Perhaps you might institute a new employee policy if a worker’s actions caused the accident rather than a malfunctioning machine or something similar.

You should conduct a thorough audit of all your policies, not just the one that caused this incident. Understand that if anything like this reoccurs, it might mean that you must close your doors for good. The public and your workers likely won’t tolerate another mistake like this one.

You Can Get Rid of Any Incompetent Employees

You should also probably consider getting rid of any worker or workers who caused the accident. If a machine on your assembly line went haywire and caused a fire, and nothing an employee did caused it, you likely will not have to fire anyone. If someone acted negligently, though, you may need to make an example of them.

If you are not sure what happened, but you know the situation involved a worker or workers, talk to them in private. Try to comprehend the sequence of events that caused the accident.

Then, you can make a decision regarding whether you should let this employee go if they did something truly egregious. If they knew their actions could cause a dangerous situation, but that did not stop them, they should not have any further place within your organization.

Firing them probably won’t feel good, but it needs to happen. When you do it, you’re sending a strong message to the rest of the staff. You don’t want to seem like an ogre, but you also have to protect the rest of your workers, not to mention the integrity and reputation of your business entity.