Closing down the Business for Winter Breaks – Here’s What You Should Do

The holiday season is here, which usually means that many of us will be planning our annual vacation with friends and family and thinking of winter break closures. While some of us may be planning vacation trips with the rest of the family, others could just be making plans to sit in front of the fireplace with their loved ones and enjoying the holiday season in full flow. 

However, regardless of your plans, chances are that you will have winter break closures for your shop and focus on family and vacation. If you own a business of your own and plan to shut down the offices, you need to take care of a few things on your plate. 

Knowing the perils that can come up with leaving your office building empty for an extended period, you must follow the right solutions. 

In this article, we take a look at the possible tips and techniques you can follow during winter break closures. It is almost time for your winter break maintenance period as well, which is why you should run all due maintenance works right now. 

Notify Everyone 

Before you actually shut down your office building, you should preferably notify everyone, including your customers, clients, and other stakeholders, of the shutdown. You should let everyone know of the exact dates of the shutdown so that they can plan accordingly. 

The last thing you would want is for a primary stakeholder to show up at the building during the closure because they weren’t notified. However, you should also be careful not to publicize this information too much.

Theft is more common today than we reckon and prying eyes could land on your office space if you are too public about the closure. You do not want to unnecessarily let everyone know that your office space will be empty and can be a possible location for the next heist. 

Check on Equipment and Fire Alarms 

Before you shut down your office for the holiday season, it is necessary that you check on the fire alarm and the equipment behind it. Since your offices will be empty, you will completely be relying on your fire alarm to notify you of a possible breach in the system. 

You should preferably test all of your fire alarm systems and make sure that nothing is amiss in them before you leave. Everything should be working properly without fail. You can also consider updating your systems to automatically notify the relevant authorities in the case of a fire. 

Fire damage can destroy a lot of your equipment and official records, which is why you would want immediate action to be taken towards remediation. 

Turn Down the Heat 

With no one in the building during the vacations period, you can think about turning down the heat. Turning down the heat will help you save costs and reduce your energy wastage. You can also update your heating system to detect the number of occupants in the building and set heating accordingly. Once the setting is adjusted and the heat is lowered, you can vacation happily, knowing that you aren’t wasting money on unnecessary heating expenditures during the winter break closure. 

Unplug All Appliances 

Following the same line of thoughts as mentioned above, you should also power off and unplug all electronic devices within your premises. Just shutting down the systems isn’t enough, as you would also have to make sure that they are unplugged. 

Vampire appliances can suck energy from the sockets even when they are turned off, which is why you should ideally unplug them from the socket to make sure that you aren’t wasting energy at all. Your electronic devices can suck up hundreds of dollars in energy just when they are plugged in. 

The electronic appliances you should preferably shut down include: 

• Routers
• Modems 
• Computers
• Printers 
• Chargers 
• Microwaves 
• Televisions 

Set up Timed Lights 

Timed lights can be a blessing in your office space if you are away during the holiday season. Timed lights follow an electronic timer, on the basis of which lights turn on and off automatically. The lights in your office space will turn on by themselves to shoo away burglars and will then turn off automatically as well to save energy. This can be a good way to avoid thefts and save energy. 

Have Backups 

Before you unplug your computers, you should make sure that the data present in them is backed up on an external source. The data on your computers is important to you, which is why it should be present elsewhere on the cloud as well. Having all your data on hardware systems will mean that damage from a disaster will take away important information and leave you with nothing. 

Smoke and water cleanup can be an extensive process if you don’t have the right team available. 911 Restoration of Washington DC is just a call away for you! You can get in touch with us to perform a thorough inspection of your office and clear it up for future use.