You NEED Public Liability Insurance!

You NEED Public Liability Insurance!

NOTE: The information in this blog is not official advice and you should always get the advice of an insurance professional. The purpose of this is just to orient you to what it means for the beauty industry and understanding one key part of keeping your insurance valid.

What is public liability insurance?
> Let’s break it down:

> Public: concerning or open to the people as a whole, which means people in general or any person.

> Liability: A liability is something that you have an obligation to, especially a financial obligation. It comes from liable which means legally responsible for something by law. In public liability you have a legal responsibility towards the general public. A responsibility which is enforceable by law.

As a salon owner, you have a financial obligation to the public if something were to go wrong inside your salon.

> Insurance: is something that provides protection against something that could go wrong. Like a seat belt is an insurance of not going through the windscreen in a car crash. I.E if something bad was to happen, it would protect, prevent or minimise the damage that could come from that.

> Insurance Policy: a contract that says insurance against a bad thing happening will be provided.

How does Public Liability Insurance protect you?

Here’s a list of just some sh*tty things that could happen in your salon, that public liability insurance could protect you against.

Note: These things are not automatically covered in every Public Liability Insurance Policy and they are also not the only things that public liability insurance would cover. These are just examples. 

• Getting tint that does not come out on a client’s designer handbag
• Dropping tweezers onto a clients face and hurting them
• Them slipping over and the breaking a leg or arm
• Cutting someone’s face with eyebrow thread and they decided to sue because it was right before a big job interview (they would have to be very mean and un-reasonable to do this, however, people can get very upset when damage is done to their face)
• Getting product in someone’s eye that causes damage to their eye

When taking out your policy it is important that you understand in full what is covered and not covered. It is YOUR responsibility of things you need to have in place for insurance to be paid out. You need to make sure that you go over your Public Insurance Policy with a fine tooth comb to see if it’s right for you!

For example: If you had a leaking pipe you knew about and didn’t fix and a client slipped over the leaking water and broke their leg as a result,  the insurance company would potentially discover that and not pay out insurance. The reason for this is that you did not maintain your property, leading to a hazard.

These requirements and responsibilities are taken from an actual Beauty Public Liability Insurance Policy:

The Insured must take reasonable care and or action to:

ensure that only competent employees are employed;

maintain all property in sound condition;

avoid or minimise loss or damage to property;

prevent personal injury, property damage and/or advertising injury;

prevent the manufacture, sale or supply of defective products;

trace, recall or modify any products containing any defect or deficiency of which the Insured has knowledge or has reason to suspect may exist; and

comply with all statutory obligations that concern the safety of persons or property.

Now we get to the whole point of this blog and let’s go over the 1st point in the obligations…

ENSURE THAT ONLY COMPETENT EMPLOYEES ARE EMPLOYED

This would include yourself. How do you ensure this? You need to make sure they are trained and have evidence of that training. Simplest way to prove someone is trained and competent is a certificate.

The whole take away of this blog is that being properly trained and certified in the services you deliver is vital for your public liability insurance to actually be effective.

Without proper evidence that you have competent employees an insurance company could not pay out the insurance due to you and be perfectly within their rights to not pay out.

We sincerely hope that you never get to the stage of needing to claim public liability insurance. It would be very upsetting for all involved if you did need to and the claim was denied because you did not have a certificate for each service you provide.

IMPORTANCE OF BEING CERTIFIED

As above, for Public Liability Insurance to be valid, it’s important to be trained and certified in each of the treatments that you are conducting. If you are treating without certifications, you should really think about completing relevant courses to avoid this from ever happening - click here to view courses.

Already trained elsewhere, or been completing the treatments forever but do not hold a certificate? Hit us up and we will work out a package to get you all the certificates you need, at a discounted price as long as you can prove your experience in the subject.

Additional note: Getting your products from a reputable supplier that can be contacted and their product sources traced is a good idea. It allows you to stay in compliant in this area also. Oh, make sure you are not using expired products either.

TRACE, RECALL OR MODIFY AND PRODUCTS CONTAINING ANY DEFECT OR DEFICIENCY OF WHICH THE INSURED HAS KNOWLEDGE OR HAS REASON TO SUSPECT MAY EXIST.