Safety concerns for Santa

Where is Santa?

Mrs Santa is baking cookies when told the news that the elves have not heard from Santa in over an hour, and they were worried because it’s unusual not to hear “Ho Ho Ho!” bellowed in the distance. Mrs Santa is a little concerned because of how cold it was outside. Knowing that Santa went to spend quality time with his reindeer, leading up to the busiest night of the year, she puts on her large heavy velvet coat and fluffy hat and heads out to the stables to look for him, but, he isn’t there!

She finally finds him 15 mins later in the barn further down the lane. Only because she could hear snoring and Dominick the Donkey laughing so hard, whilst trying to remember the words to “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth”

She stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips and coughed loudly. Father Christmas appeared to be asleep after what looked like a feast of carrots, mince pies and sherry. Mrs Santa got cross, and woke him with the words “I was really worried about you” and “Why haven’t you answered your phone? I have been looking everywhere for you!”

“How Safe is it for Santa on Christmas Eve?”

Whilst walking around North Pole City the following day, reeling from the telling off received, it made Father Christmas think about his personal safety seriously, how it also impacts others- and the mammoth journey on Christmas Eve. It made him shudder when he thought about how much work he had to do that night, and alone for most of it.

OK, he had his usual pre-safety checklist:

Reindeer ear and eye protection and non-slip hooves
Sleigh airbag for those bumpy landings
Lights and light reflectors to be seen by passing aircraft and to be safe when making hazardous manoeuvres
Medical bag for unforeseen illness or accidents on route
Extra mince pies (just in case he got peckish)

And every year the list of safety measures grew.

Last year, his elf-and-safety department’s risk assessment threatened that climbing down the chimney would be replaced by using a safer winch system. This made Santa roll his eyes. His reluctant grumblings of “I will lose some weight if I have to” fell on their deaf pointy ears. They knew the day would come sooner rather than later, what with the Christmas Candy he kept eating when Mrs Claus wasn’t looking. With many countries using log fires, there was also THAT year when Santa couldn’t sit down for a month! They would bide their time for when Santa couldn’t argue anymore.

There was also the ongoing issue of his back playing up because of all the heavy lifting. Over the years, the workshop team had started providing smaller gifts to aid the ease of manual handling. But there was that occasion when he got stuck bending down to pick up the glass of sherry (for medicinal purposes, you understand). He kept that quiet, it would only add to the concerns about descending the chimneys.

Don’t even get Santa started on the stress of it all. The time constraints. The staffing issues with all those seasonal colds going around. And then there’s the rumour of someone’s Mommy kissing him last year!

The more he thought about it, the more potential safety issues were highlighted and hadn’t really been discussed. And this worried him.

Unbeknown to him, Mrs Claus had been worrying too

“How can Santa be Safer on Christmas Eve?”

Mrs Claus was knitting when he returned to their cosy abode, with the waft of gingerbread in the air. She looked at his worried face and exclaimed that she had just what he needed. He sat and extended his hand for something delicious that was sure to be placed in it. It was her mobile phone.

“I have done some Googling and found an App that sounds just what we need to address you working on your own. It means you can check in at regular intervals. And when you don’t, it will remind you…..”

She was interrupted with a “But…”

“But nothing. This system is just what I need to know that you’re safe. If you don’t check in, it can be escalated further. Then the team can come and look for you, using the location tracker. This makes me feel so relieved!”

“But….I don’t always have data signal” Santa finally got to say. “It’s a waste of chocolate coins”

“That’s not a problem my dear, MyTeamSafe switches automatically to SMS fallback mode. Escalations still happen” She smiled.

Whilst huddled together in front of the open fire, and nibbling on the freshly baked ginger cookies, they researched more. This is where they learnt that the App worked just how they needed it to, by defining different strategies to meet different risks and being able to set their own check-in times. Ticking all the Christmas Boxes.

Santa laughed. He explained to Mrs Claus, “Look! It even has a notes area, where important notes are immediately sent to Supervisors. That will stop my little helpers from moaning about not being able to read my handwriting when I get back. I could use it to let them know of maintenance required on the sleigh, and about any dodgy characters that I meet on the rooftops. They can instantly be informed about naughty children, the missing chimneys, the changes of addresses and those who are making fun of our elves, with that silly elf on the shelf game.

“Ho Ho Ho!” Bellowed Santa “I love it, let’s book a free trial!”

He emailed blog@myteamsafe.com and was up and running in time for Christmas Eve.

MyTeamSafe®, an award-winning lone-worker App & proud supporter of the Suzy Lamplugh Trust