During the holiday season, many businesses such as retail stores, restaurants, delis, and bakeries depend on temporary workers to help handle the barrage of additional customers and sales. Although they offer relief to swamped business owners, temporary workers can also create potential liability issues when they are not properly trained in all areas of safety and business operations. In today's blog post, we'll discuss three ways to better protect temporary workers and ultimately reduce potential liability issues for companies.

Merchandise and Food Handling Training

Retail stores and restaurants are two industries that most heavily depend on temporary workers for help during the holiday season. Unfortunately, temp workers can injure themselves or others when they are not trained on safe merchandise handling or proper food handling procedures. Business owners and managers should take time to ensure their workers know how to safely lift and stock merchandise to prevent injury to themselves and customers, as well as prevent damages to merchandise. For restaurants and other food service businesses, training should include proper food handling procedures, sanitary practices, compliance with health codes, and safe knife and kitchen equipment usage.

Emergency and Safety Training

Temporary workers often arrive on the job with little to no experience in dealing with emergency situations or safety training. Rather than risk liability issues because of temp workers inadequately prepared for emergency situations, businesses can create training programs that efficiently but effectively train temp employees for emergency situations. Emergency training should include the following:

• How to safely evacuate the premises in the event of a fire, flood, or other weather disaster
• How to administer basic CPR and First Aid
• How to protect themselves and customers if the business is robbed

Equipment and Machinery Operation Training

A large number of accidents and injuries occur for temp workers because of poor or nonexistent training on critical business machinery and equipment. For example, a restaurant temp worker will typically receive ample training on the cash register or food preparation, but far less training on how to safely operate equipment such as fryers, griddles, dishwashing equipment, or other critical machinery. Retail shops and restaurants can minimize their liability risk and potential Workers Compensation claims by making sure temp workers are thoroughly trained before allowing them to operate equipment and specialized machinery.

Businesses that need additional labor during the busy holiday season shouldn't have to face higher liability risks just because they're hiring temporary workers. With proper training, temporary workers can contribute to a busy company without creating a liability issue for their employer. Aegis Insurance & Financial Services specializes in helping businesses of all industries get the financial protection they need in the event of disaster, employee or customer injury, or other major losses. Aegis offers reliable, top-quality commercial insurance policies all at competitive rates, including Workers Compensation, General Liability, Business Owners Policy, Commercial Property, and Excess Liability coverage. Contact Aegis today at 713-850-7622 for more information, or go online to request a free quote.