 This is Derek Christian with Cleaning Business today and I wanted to continue my series about snowfall and sorry about the scratch on my face was playing with my dog and he got me. But we talked last week about cancellation but this week I want to talk about something just about as important which is when you don't cancel and what I mean is days like today so hopefully you can see all this. This is just a little bit of snow that we got today. We are not going to cancel for that. Our customers would never understand but we do need to start considering some things. Those steps I just showed you which are my steps bad Derek have a pretty good amount of basically snow and actually in our case right now ice on them which makes them pretty slippery. Now as an employer you're responsible for making sure that your employees have a safe workspace. Now in our circumstance our workspace happens to be our customers homes so we have to make sure that our customers homes are safer our employees to go into. So we've got to think through policies and communicate with our customers that they need to shovel their driveways keep their stairs clear etc. But snow is going to fall during the day and what are you going to do about it. A lot of cleaning services I know put same quick dissolve chemical rocks not rock salt but chloride or I can't remember what it's called but there is a chemical little dissolve snow and ice pretty quickly in their vehicles for their employees to use. Once again you've got to warn customers you're going to do this though because some customers might have dogs with sensitivities or might have a stain concrete and don't want you to use it. So you got to let customers know if you're going to be throwing something out I know some people who do that and once again you've just got to let customers know that hey you know I know it might not seem bad to you but my people are going to be coming with vacuums and cleaning supplies in their hand and it's one thing to go outside when you can grab hold of the handrails and go down carefully it's everything to go outside when you've got to get in and out of stairs carrying things and also once again if anyone slips that's a liability in a workers comp claim. So you do have to take it pretty seriously and think about what you're going to do about bad weather. Another thing you're going to want to think about is snow and when it relates to driving. Auto accidents as we all know go way up when it snows. So in our case we will actually delay the start of the day a little bit even if the schools don't because we feel like it's a lot safer for our employees to be on the street when the sun is up and they can actually see ice and such and they're not going to hit ice. So if we've got a snowy day we will start at nine instead of eight and warn all the customers accordingly. Just because once again I don't want my people on the road at seven thirty when they can't see the ice. It's a lot safer when you can see it and once the sun comes up around here a lot of times that so snow and salt and stuff will need to start breaking down. This also means you're going to need to plan ahead and look at the weather ahead of time and have a plan to communicate with your customers the day ahead of time. Hey looks like snow might be in the weather. Make sure that you shovel before you leave in the morning. If certain things happen we won't be able to clean and here's why. So those are some of my tips for snow and ice. Hopefully it helps. I'd love to hear in the comments what all of you do.