TAKE COVER

If you have selfemployed therapists or techs working in your salon or spa, do you need to provide cover for them? Insurance specialist Christina Ryan explains

As more salon owners choose to rent out rooms or chairs to self-employed therapists, nail techs or hairdressers, the question of whether you need to provide insurance often crops up. While your responsibilities in respect of employment law are different when you trade this way, as the proprietor, you are still responsible for the salon premises and there are some grey areas you need to think about carefully to make sure you are not left uninsured in the event of a claim.

If you own your own salon, you need to have an insurance policy that provides cover for your business as a whole. If you rent out chairs or spaces to self-employed therapists, it’s important that you make sure they have their own insurance. This is because the treatments being carried out by the self-employed therapists working in your salon are not your responsibility.

A self-employed therapist has their own responsibility for carrying out a treatment with due care and consideration. If a claim is made against them by one of their clients, the claim should be dealt with under the self-employed therapist’s insurance policy, not yours.

Keeping clients happy

If, however, you hadn’t checked their insurance and they actually had none in place, you may be left with a disgruntled customer who could tarnish your salon’s reputation in the event they are unable to make a claim against the therapist. Many clients will only see your salon as the provider of the treatment, regardless of the employment status of your therapists. If you’ve made sure that your self-employed therapists have their own insurance in place, you can then redirect the claim to the therapist’s insurers. It is important for a salon owner to keep copies of the therapist’s insurance documents, especially as a therapist may move to another salon and their clients have up to three years to make an injury claim.

Keep up to date

We advise salon owners to keep copies of all their self-employed therapists’ insurance details and qualification certificates and to make sure these are always up to date.

If a customer of a self-employed therapist trips over something in the salon’s reception area, for example, this is the responsibility of the salon owner and any claim will be handled by the salon owner’s insurers. You can see it is sometimes difficult to draw a definite line between the responsibility of the salon owner and that of the therapist, so it is important to speak to an insurer who specialises in this type of insurance.

Christina Ryan is senior account handler for Professional Beauty Direct Insurance, which offers annual cover from £52.50 a year for therapists and £154 for salons. Contact the team: 0345 605 8670 professionalbeauty.co.uk/insurance