As the bird activity rush approaches, many commercial spaces find themselves scrambling to manage the influx of birds entering their facilities. The biggest issue often isn’t a lack of action but falling into common traps that leave teams unprepared for handling bird-related problems.
If your business experiences health risks, customer disturbances, or significant nuisance issues from birds, it’s crucial to avoid these mistakes. Here are four common traps that can lead to costly disruptions during peak bird activity, leaving you vulnerable to bigger problems down the line.
1. Failing to Differentiate Key Roles
One of the biggest mistakes teams make is not clearly defining who is responsible for what when managing bird issues. Birds don’t just impact one area of operations—they affect health, safety, maintenance, and more. Without a coordinated approach, gaps in coverage emerge, leading to incomplete solutions. It’s essential to differentiate roles between teams:
- Operations Team: This team is often tasked with day-to-day store maintenance, including securing doors and managing sanitation around spills like pet food, bird seed, or rice. When protocols aren’t kept up to date to reflect bird activity, stores become more vulnerable to bird infestations.
- Food Safety Team: If food safety isn’t at the forefront, bird droppings on open produce or shelving can lead to contamination. A lack of training or clear reporting structures for bird sightings can leave teams unaware of how to manage these risks effectively.
- Facilities Team: Structural vulnerabilities such as broken doors or damage are often overlooked until it’s too late. Delayed attention to work orders can allow birds easy entry, leading to more extensive problems.
Without proper differentiation of responsibilities, teams are likely to overlook critical elements, increasing the risk of costly disruptions.
2. Skipping Proper Training
Many businesses fail to integrate pest bird management into regular employee training, assuming it’s a minor issue that doesn’t warrant much attention. This is a critical error. Employees should be trained well before the bird activity rush begins to ensure they understand:
- The Risks: Birds present more than just a minor inconvenience; they can carry diseases, create health and safety risks, lead to public relations concerns, and damage products, particularly in industries related to food production.
- Response Protocols: When employees are unsure of the correct steps to report bird intrusions, it causes delays in resolving the issue, making it more difficult to manage over time. This can also lead to public relations challenges, resulting in more significant problems down the road
- Preventative Measures: Failing to empower employees with the knowledge to spot early signs of bird activity, such as structural vulnerabilities or spillage, can allow minor issues to escalate.
If training is skipped or downplayed, businesses miss key opportunities to prevent bird problems before they grow.
3. Relying on Quick Fixes or DIY Solutions
A common misconception is that bird issues can be handled like any other pest problem. This leads businesses to implement quick fixes or DIY solutions that simply don’t work. The biggest traps here include:
- Delayed Response: Hoping the birds will leave on their own or that the problem will “work itself out” rarely works. Birds will continue to come back if the root of the issue isn’t addressed.
- DIY Attempts: Whether it’s using poison, shooting, or relying on effigies like fake owls, these methods can backfire, causing public relations issues and, in some cases, legal trouble if the birds are a protected species. Plus, they often don’t work.
- Skipping Professional Help: Relying on in-house staff who aren’t trained in bird management or using general pest control methods typically leads to incomplete solutions. Birds require specialized removal and prevention tactics that go beyond standard pest control.
4. Ineffective Communication Across Teams
The final trap is failing to establish strong lines of communication when it comes to managing bird issues. This results in confusion, redundant efforts, and a lack of preparedness. Some key communication pitfalls include:
- Unclear Expectations: If team members don’t have clear expectations or protocols to follow, they may try to solve the problem on their own, which often leads to more harm than good.
- Poor Implementation of the Plan: It’s not enough to have a pest bird management plan in place—it must be communicated effectively. Teams need to understand their roles, the goals, the risks, and the definition of success.
- Lack of Awareness: When team members aren’t fully informed about the importance of these preventative measures, they may not fully recognize the significance of their role, resulting in less thorough efforts and incomplete solutions.
Ensuring that communication is clear, direct, and consistent can make all the difference when it comes to successfully managing the upcoming bird activity rush.
Avoid the Traps and Call in the Experts
We’ve worked with countless businesses that fell into one or more of these traps before partnering with us. Bird management requires expertise, a tailored approach, and effective execution. If your vendor doesn’t offer trained employees, guaranteed results, and a comprehensive communication plan, you’re likely headed for more headaches and bigger issues.
By identifying and avoiding these common traps, you can ensure your facility is prepared to handle the bird activity rush effectively and efficiently. Rather than struggling through these challenges on your own, consider partnering with professionals who can equip your team with the right knowledge, strategies, and support.