As an employer, you know all too well how crucial it is that you take care of employee safety. You spent hours reading up on this before you even took on your first employee. You even do regular checks to make sure everything is a-okay. You’ve been determined from day one that you will look after employees like you would a child. The trouble is, you didn’t think to check your wiring.
One unfortunate day, an exposed wire sparked an office fire. During the evacuation, a few of your employees suffered burns. Just like that, your hard work to make everyone feel safe has crumbled to ash. Like your office building, your employee relations are nothing more than empty shells since the event. Though you aren’t to blame for the fire, your employees trusted you to keep them safe, and you failed. While you’ve managed to rebuild your bricks and mortar space, the same can’t be said for your employee relations.
But, something has to change. You want to get things back to the happy and productive team you were before this happened. We won’t lie to you; rebuilding trust here is going to be far trickier than restoring your office space. But, by following these pointers, you might manage to do it.
Be open about what happened
When something like this happens, managers often take an irritating stance of not letting staff know anything. This urge for privacy does make some sense. You may feel like you can limit the damage by not going into detail. You might even fail to address what went on because you want to move forward. But, ignoring something doesn’t make it better. If your team are left in the dark about this, they’re more liable to feel unsafe when they return. After all, how can they know the same won’t happen again if they don’t know what went wrong in the first place? Your best bet is to be open about what happened from the off. Tell them about the electrical fault. Keep them up to date with progress on the repairs. This is a small thing, but it’ll make a huge difference. Rather than creating an ‘us and them’ mentality, this ensures everyone faces things together. And, that can work wonders for retaining or rebuilding a feeling of solidarity.
Replace anything lost
It’s standard fare for staff to leave their belongings when a fire alarm rings at work. This rule stops people from putting themselves in danger to retrieve their bags. But, that doesn’t stop the sting if employees lost valuable or meaningful items to those flames. That’s why you should also either replace things you know they’ve lost, or offer some compensation. You should receive a payout large enough to cover everything you lost in that fire. That includes things like employee belongings in the building at the time. If you have issues getting enough compensation, bear in mind that you could turn to a public adjuster to fight for what you’re owed. You can head to companies like Miller Public Adjusters for more information if you’re having issues like these. If your insurance payout goes to plan, though, you can start compensating colleagues as soon as that money hits your bank. Just seeing this small effort from you is sure to encourage them not to see you as the villain.
Offer the necessary emotional support
Of course, putting money towards something doesn’t always solve it. Don’t we all learn that the hard way? You may find that, for many, the emotional stress the fire caused is far worse than the physical loss. When it comes down to things like this, many people don’t care about their belongings. But, you can bet they’ll care about the fact they can’t close their eyes without seeing flames. As the boss, you, of course, need to be supportive of those emotions. But, you should also go above and beyond by offering therapy sessions. There are many company therapists out there who will speak to your team members for a set fee. Some companies make use of services like these on a regular basis. This is a fantastic way to build morale and avoid potential problems. And, it could be the single most useful thing for getting your team to trust working with you again. This step shows that you care about their emotional wellbeing. It also helps them to get mental support they may not be able to afford otherwise. All the better for ensuring a happy and hopeful team when business gets back underway.
Take positive steps for change
It should go without saying that you also need to take positive steps for change. None of the above efforts are going to build solid trust foundations if you don’t do this. Ultimately, you need to reassure your team that the same thing will never happen again. How else can they feel comfortable at work again? In part, letting them know what happened will help here. But, once they know, you need to tell them how you’ll stop it from happening again. Do you need to implement a better fire evacuation plan? Do you need to upgrade your office wiring for improved safety? It may even be that doing regular checks into this from now on will do the trick. Either way, you can’t let things continue how they were. If nothing changes, then your employee’s new dislike of work won’t either. Over time, you may even find that valued team members leave this way. Don’t let it happen. Make sure that things are as safe as they can be.
An office fire is never a pleasant experience, for you or your team. It means lost profits, lost working time, and a whole load of stress. If you don’t settle your team back into things in these ways, you can bet the damage will be a whole lot longer lasting than just the time it takes to get your office back up and running.
