A New Year’s Resolution That Can Save Thousands of Dollars

Several years ago my home was burglarized. That was not a happy day. During the insurance claim process, the adjuster required me to provide evidence of each stolen item along with it’s replacement value. In addition, they asked me to verify ownership of those items with receipts, precise descriptions, or photos. Fortunately, my phone and my wife’s phone connect to an online file storage service. We also keep the camera upload setting enabled. Every photo over the last several years had synced to the cloud.

Subsequently, I spent several evenings scrolling through old photos and searching for pictures… our missing projector, the extension cord, my axe, and other random items that had been stolen. This documentation saved us a lot of money!

As a result, I now take a few minutes every New Year’s Day to walk around the house and take pictures of every item we own. I open drawers and closets, snap pictures of each shelf on the bookshelf and all the items in the pantry. I do this throughout the entire house. Next time we get burglarized, it will take a lot less time to find specific pictures!

New Year’s Day can also be a great time for a business to take stock of certain things and do a little planning for the upcoming year. Here are a few things you might consider for your New Year’s Resolution as we kick off 2023:

Hardware Rotation: Take Inventory

If you find that someone is using a computer with an outdated operating system or one that barely runs, mark it down and schedule it for replacement. Don’t give the employee who uses that machine the impression that they don’t matter to you and the organization. The same goes for printers and monitors. If an employee has a monitor that flickers, get ahead of that. Schedule a replacement for any printer that has inkless lines running throughout the text. Broken and defective equipment sends all kinds of messages to your employees and customers. And none of those messages are good!

Make a New Year’s resolution to show your employees some love. The best ones are expensive to replace. SUURV Technologies can help your business develop a hardware rotation plan.

Safety Checks

You check your smoker detectors at home. Do this at the office too! And while you are at it, check the fire extinguishers. Make sure they have been inspected by a professional in accordance with the manufacturer’s recommendations. Next, you might also review the fire escape plan. Many offices create one in a hurry to meet compliance standards. But nine years later, it’s a faded piece of paper on the wall that’s no longer accurate.

And here’s a big one that has become a huge problem recently. Update your E911 addresses! If you have an employee that previously worked at the office, but now works from home, make sure that their home address is set up in the E911 system. For example, the very last thing you ever want to happen is for EMS to show up at the office when your employee or their family desperately needed EMS at their home instead.

Battery Backups

Many people purchase battery backups in case the lights flicker or go out for a few minutes. This is a great idea! But these uninterruptible power supply (UPS) devices do not last forever. Additionally, some UPS systems have outlets connected to the battery’s storage while other outlets are not. Be sure that the pencil sharpener and the computer are plugged into the proper outlets. And while you are at it, make certain that nobody has plugged a space heater into the battery side of the UPS. I’ve literally seen scorched and melted electronic equipment as a consequence of this mistake. And please note, it is very common for employees to use space heaters during this time of the year.

Insurance Updates

if you do not have Cyber Insurance, take care of this immediately. Call your agent on Tuesday when they are back at the office. People buy home insurance because they might use it one day. By contrast, people buy car insurance because they will most likely use it. You may be the safest driver on the road, but someday someone will manage to get you! By comparison, cyber insurance is a lot like car insurance, perhaps more than we would like to believe. It’s probable that your business will need it during the next 10 to 15 years.

Policy Updates

Finally, last but not least on the New Year’s Resolution list, read your employee handbook. Most people glance over it once, check it off their mental “to do” list, and never think about it again. But your company changes, and your handbook probably needs a few updates. Maybe you have employees that drive company vehicles now, but you didn’t when the handbook was originally written. You might want to add a section about following traffic laws somewhere in there!

These are just some of the things you might consider doing this week. But I’m sure I missed a few! What are some of the items on your New Years List?