By Tina Valentine, Risk Manager, Guild Insurance

Recognising the risks you face in the day-to-day operation of your salon is the first step in becoming an effective risk manager.

Even though we live and work with risk everyday, we have the capacity to manage risk and keep it within tolerable limits. While having the best insurance cover certainly helps to alleviate the financial impact of an incident, the more important issues to safeguard relate to business integrity and your professional reputation. These can be impacted by a broad range of risks.

Take for example, the type of the products applied to your customers’ hair and skin on a daily basis. Many of these products have the potential to burn or cause skin reactions. Guild Insurance has received a number of claims involving chemical burns which have resulted in considerable expense to settle them. While this cost is quantifiable, the impact on one’s reputation is often immense.

In the second edition of the Guild Group's newsletter The Blueprint, we examine some of the core business issues that will help you ‘stay on the front foot' with your business management in the year ahead.