Safeguarding Your Business Insurance Canada From Office Parties And Décor

Posted by johnhrq on January 15th, 2020

In the holiday season you have to be extra careful about how you manage your office. Staff and office colleagues are in the mood to party and celebrate and generally speaking the tendency is to conduct such parties within your business premises either during lunch hours or after office.

At such parties, while there is a lot of fun and frolic, people tend to indulge in things more so than they normally would. Secondly, there are also risks associated with office décor and damage arising due to consumption of alcohol. From a Business Insurance Canada perspective, if you are hosting a party at your office, then as a business owner you have to be careful and need to minimize your exposure to risks.

Below are some guidelines that could help you exercise due diligence in this matter:

Safety tips associated with festive holiday décor:

Setting up the decorations:

- Quite a few decorations require installation at heights beyond what can be reached from the ground and will mostly involve a ladder.
- Proper equipment and a spotter are required, in case you or your employees are decorating yourself.
- Safety footwear, tight clothing and proper insulation are a must-have.
- In cases where you are hiring a third-party vendor to do decorations, please remember to get a copy of their liability insurance.
- All holiday decorations must be stable and secure, especially the Christmas tree.

Care with the lights:

- Christmas lights usually wear out over time even if they are used properly. This means that you need to inspect your lighting to see if there are any frayed wires, broken sockets, plugs or other issues.
- The trend nowadays is to use low voltage Christmas lights as they are considered safe because they do not produce a fatal shock.
- Using a Christmas lights time is recommended to prevent overheating.

Best practices/ precautions with fires:

- Never place, hang, or stick your holiday décor or tree too close to lights, heat sources, and fire/smoke detectors.
- Ideally speaking a natural Christmas tree should be placed in a tree stand with adequate water supply to avoid it from becoming dry and flammable.

Tips to make your party disaster-free

The below-mentioned tips serve as best-practices:

- As a first step, establish contact with your insurance broker beforehand and review policy coverage.
- Let your broker know, if you plan to serve alcohol.
- Review your business insurance Canada policy to update yourself of any limitations, exclusions, or stipulations on it.
- Try hosting a breakfast, brunch or lunch holiday party. This will limit or exclude alcohol consumption.
- Communicate to your employees that you have a zero tolerance policy regarding drinking and driving.
- If you are serving alcohol, either arrange transportation for employees or offer them taxi vouchers.
- Avoid offering an open bar to your employees - give them 1 or 2 complimentary drink tickets and then ask them to pay for remaining alcoholic drinks they may consume.
- If the holiday party is at another location outside office, ensure to hire bartenders who are professional, properly trained, and have the appropriate certifications to serve alcohol in Alberta.

Keep yourself updated:

It is highly recommended to read and keep yourself informed about business insurance Canada, especially how it is affected by holiday parties. There are several do's and don'ts that you ought to be aware of so that due precautions can be exercised in a timely way to prevent any big issue from arising.

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