Business Protection Bulletin

Pest control comes with its own unique risks, and those risks demand their own unique insurance policy. Some providers won’t even cover pest control contractors simply because there’s so much that can go wrong, even with the most expert, experienced contractors. Niche providers are familiar with the risks that pest control contractor insurance needs to cover, but these providers often don’t have quite the economic weight with which to inspire confidence in their customers.

In short: It’s tricky getting adequate pest control insurance coverage. You need a provider that has the financial muscle to back you, but with attention to detail and knowledge of the industry. Here are just a few of the things that need to be covered:

Pollution Coverage

No matter how environmentally sound your product may be, there’s a stigma that surrounds the compounds used by exterminators. With pollution insurance, it’s not just about staying covered, it’s about giving your customer peace of mind: If something happens, we have the financial backing to fix it. Carrying pollution coverage is as much about covering your own risks as it is about sending the right message to the people you service.

Pest Inspection Damage Liability

Some of the risks involved in pest control have nothing to do with poisons and traps, and everything to do with the simple act of inspection. If you knock a lamp over in your own home, you buy a new lamp. Knock a lamp over in a customer’s house while looking for mouse droppings, and you’ve got a liability problem on your hands. Every part of the process needs to be covered, from inspection to extermination.

Worker’s Compensation

There’s no such thing as a job where employees never get hurt. With pest control, you have your people carrying around heavy tanks of poisons, placing traps, and sometimes getting face to face with dangerous animals. Your provider needs to understand the unique risks faced by your employees when they’re ridding a home of unwanted guests.

General Liability

If you’ve worked in pest control for any amount of time, then you’ve learned that the job comes with all of the risks you’d expect to come with trapping animals and getting rid of bugs, and a whole lot of risks that you’d never see coming. You need general liability coverage in just about every field, but few jobs bring as many unforeseen liability issues as pest control.

You know when you have to get a big, heavy sofa out of the home, maybe you have to squeeze it through a tiny door and down two flights of stairs? It’s a task that feels Herculean, impossible, a full week’s workout in a half hour. There is the moment of triumph afterwards, but the process itself can feel like you’re only making an inch worth of progress at a time. If you work in moving, then you know that this is an everyday experience for professional moving companies.

The real tricky part is that a mover has to get a sofa out of one home, and into another one, usually in a single day, and without doing any damage. Throwing a couch out is tricky enough, but you don’t need to worry if it gets a little banged up on the way out of the house. Not to mention, the mover doesn’t get to say “Well we don’t really need this anymore, let’s toss it!” when something won’t fit in the car.

The US Department of Transportation Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (trying saying that three times fast) has ruled that a moving company is responsible for the value of each and every item they transport, so in this industry there’s no getting away with “Hey, you knew the risks.”

The level of responsibility a mover takes can change depending on what level of coverage the customer has selected. With “released value” the mover is only responsible for a certain amount of money per pound, per object, usually around sixty cents. This can be a good deal for the mover, as a $500 chair might only cost the mover $10 if they break it. Full value covers property for the full value.

If your state allows, you may want to consider selling insurance from your own provider so that your customers are completely covered should something go wrong, and you have less risk on your own part.

It’s worth noting: Moving can be stressful for many people, and that stress can manifest in strange ways. It’s not unusual for a mover to deliver a coffee table without a scratch on it, only to be told that they’ve ruined it beyond repair. This is why some movers don’t touch a single thing until they’ve taken a few shots of it with their cell phone. Think of it as insurance on your moving company insurance. You don’t want to be held responsible for a dent that was already on that fridge when you got there.

Coverage is incredibly important when it comes to moving, because you’re not just covering yourself and your own people, you’re covering your customers’ property, as well.

Fitness instructors are a unique case in the insurance world. An individual who sustains an injury in a grocery store might not have anyone to blame but themselves, an employee who doesn’t follow proper safety protocol might not be eligible for worker’s compensation, but if you’re a fitness instructor, whether you work in a gym or with clients at their own homes, your client’s body is your place of business. Even in the most demanding blue collar job, your aim is to reduce physical effort so as to minimize the risk of injury. When exercising, you could say that injury is the whole point: You don’t build muscle without breaking it down through exhaustive, rigorous activity.

A good trainer knows how to tax their customers in the correct way. But, there are those moments where a customer might have failed to mention that old knee injury they sustained in high school, or they might push themselves a little too hard without giving you a chance to rein them in, or maybe they simply slipped a little while lifting a heavy weight. Whatever the cause, the fact is that any serious fitness program carries with it the risk of injury. A person working with an instructor is less likely to suffer a serious injury than someone who’s just “winging it,” but the risk can never be completely eradicated, and that’s where fitness instructor insurance comes in. On top of this, you have liability concerns like damage to the premises (one of the reasons some personal trainers won’t do house calls). If someone sets a weight down a little too hard, you might be looking at hundreds of dollars in repairs to the flooring. There is even a chance that you may be held responsible for a manufacturing error on the part of the companies where you buy your equipment.

In short: Every risk you take running a business, multiply them by about ten, and that’s the liability issues you’re looking at when your job is helping people pursue their fitness goals. “Comprehensive” is the magic word when setting up your policy, whether you’re insuring your own home-call business or buying gym instructor insurance for a full staff. Study your policy, and make sure every possibility is covered, because it’s not just your business that’s at risk, you’re also taking responsibility for the body and the health of every single customer that you or your employees work with.

When it comes to driving your own personal car, you can get away with minimum insurance. If you’re a safe driver and can cover minor issues out of pocket then you might as well save a few bucks on all that extra coverage. When it comes to driving as part of your job (and not just getting there and back), going the extra mile can give your customer a sense of comfort that will keep them coming back, especially when it’s customers that you’re transporting. This is especially true when it comes to chauffeur insurance. People rent limousines not because they need to get from point A to point B, but because they want to do it in style and luxury, and what’s more luxurious than peace of mind?

Remember that driving a limo isn’t the same as driving a taxicab. Even if it’s not one of those impossibly long stretch limos that require a degree in engineering to maneuver around a street corner, you’re going to have people drinking in the backseat, you’re going to be carrying a party around town, and your passengers probably aren’t going to be wearing seatbelts. A limo is a transport service, but it’s also sort of like a nightclub on wheels.

The best way to protect your clients is to be very picky about who you hire to drive your limos. A taxi driver has to be concerned with getting to their destination quickly, a limo driver needs to be able to do it with a soft touch. If you’re in a limo, you’re not in a hurry, you want to glide into an event in style. Nobody’s ever gotten into a limo and said “…and STEP on it!” Limo driver liability will cover your drivers in the event of injury and damages, but it won’t help if your driver simply doesn’t know how to maneuver the car with a certain degree of grace.

Briefing your clients on limo safety can help, too. For instance, we always see people sticking their heads out the sunroof in movies, but it’s not always such a great idea in real life. You never know when you’re going to catch a mouth full of bugs trying that or go bouncing out onto the roof when the car hits a bump. Not to mention, it’s illegal in a lot of places (yes, including Las Vegas), and while your passenger is likely to be the one getting hit with the ticket, you don’t want them having a bad experience in your car, even if it’s not your fault.

Limo insurance is there to cover your financial risks, but it’s your job, and the job of your drivers, to make sure your passengers have a smooth ride. Luckily, everything that makes a limo ride a little more safe can go a long way towards making it more luxurious, as well.

When it comes to certain jobs, a split second distraction can have dire consequences. If the job involves driving, operating power tools or machinery, if you work in a kitchen, near traffic, or around anything that’s hot, loud or heavy, you generally can’t afford to take your eyes off the task at hand. Unfortunately, daily life in the 21st Century is simply packed with distraction from the moment you wake up to the minute you hit the hay. Here are some tips for making sure that those distractions don’t affect the job.

Phone-Free Zones

An easy way to eliminate distraction numero uno: Simply don’t allow phones in any part of the workplace where you’re going to need to stay vigilant around forklifts, table saws and scaffoldings. Keep a plastic container, a shoebox or a desk drawer near the entrance so that workers and visitors can leave their phones somewhere handy without being distracted around hazards.

Sweat the Small Stuff

When it comes to minor annoyances throughout the day, it’s best not to get worked up about the small stuff. When it comes to workplace safety, on the other hand, it’s the small stuff that creates a domino effect that can lead to serious injury. Fuzzy dice dangling from a driver’s rearview mirror, for instance, can create a moment’s distraction when you need it the least. Somebody turning the radio up too loud in a loading zone can prevent them from hearing when you yell “duck!” Do a sweep of dangerous work areas now and then and make sure that there’s nothing to divide your employees’ attention.

Key Personnel Only

There’s usually nothing wrong with letting people visit you in an office setting, but you don’t want people visiting a warehouse or a factory or a construction site unless they absolutely need to be there. Letting friends and family members come and go from a dangerous work site as they please is a recipe for disaster. If someone doesn’t wind up being distracted talking to someone who shouldn’t be there, then the person who shouldn’t be there is likely to get hurt. If people need to visit, and they don’t absolutely need to be on the floor, let them do their visiting outside, in the lobby, anywhere but around the heavy machinery.

Keeping a distraction-free workzone really comes down to common sense: Do a walkthrough of the area, and anything that catches your attention will probably catch someone else’s attention at just the wrong moment.

Okay, so you run a relatively low-risk workplace. Maybe it’s an office or a small retailer or a coffee shop, somewhere where you don’t need forklifts, power tools or deep fryers. These environments actually bring their own hazards in that we tend to be most vulnerable when we are least prepared. The simplest tasks are perhaps not quite as likely to lead to injury as, say, working in sanitation or long-haul trucking, but that doesn’t mean that the risk is completely non-existent. Here are a few tasks that seem easy enough, but where safety precautions should nevertheless be taken:

Walking

Okay, that one sounds ridiculous, right? But how many times have you walked through a cluttered room crossing your fingers that you don’t trip on something, or that nothing falls on you? Simple falls actually account for around $8.61 in costs a year, at 16.9% of all injuries. Simple falls are the number two cause of all workplace injuries.

Lifting and Carrying

Overexertion is the number one cause of on-the-job injury, and you don’t need to be working on a construction site for this to happen to you. How many times have you seen an employee trying to carry several boxes of files at once instead of just going to the janitor’s closet and grabbing a dolly? Overexertion related injuries from lifting, carrying, pushing, pulling or simply holding something too heavy make up around 26.8% of annual workplace injuries. Make sure your employees practice common sense and that they don’t try to lift anything they can’t comfortable carry.

Paperwork

The National Safety Council has pointed out that it’s actually surprisingly dangerous to leave a whole bunch of drawers open in a file cabinet. Remember that most of the weight in a file cabinet is in the drawers. Pop open too many at a time and these cabinets can become unbalanced and tip over, leading to serious injury.

Typing

Not all injuries involve a sudden accident. Carpal tunnel syndrome or CTS-like symptoms are said to affect around half of all office workers according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. Regular breaks and ergonomic equipment can help to prevent these symptoms from developing.

Sitting, standing, walking, typing, these all seem like safe enough activities, and there are more dangerous jobs, of course, but any time you’re using your body, there is the potential for injury if you’re not careful.

There are times when putting a project on hold simply isn’t an option. Something falls through, key personnel have to take leave, your budget is cut, but you need to keep moving forward. Business protection is there to cover losses, but what happens when you’re not after recompense for losses, but simply a way to take the next step, even though you’ve been handicapped by a significant setback?

Consider Your Ends

Has your business strategy been foiled by a recent setback, or do you simply need to shift your tactics a bit? You may need to rethink your approach, but you may find that there’s actually a simpler way to get where you’re going than you’d thought. Think about your end goal in terms of desired effect. Suppose that you need to have a prototype for a website in order to show your investors by the end of the week, but a hardware crash cost you several days worth of labor hours. You might not have time to build another prototype, but would a mockup created in Photoshop achieve the same end result?

In any event, your aim is going to be not so much to shift your end goal, but to reconsider what that end goal is on a more fundamental level. How can you achieve the same effect within your current means?

Consider Your Means

There are setbacks that will demand that you completely overhaul your way of developing a project. In any office there are those linchpins, the people who you could never really replace. Maybe you can hire a temp to do some of their work, but if they ever left for good, things just wouldn’t be the same. A project budgeted at $10,000 needs to seriously change in scale and scope when the budget is cut down to $5,000.

Be Flexible

In every industry we see the penalty for failing to adapt, whether to minor setbacks, such as when Terry Gilliam famously canceled his movie Man of La Mancha over changes in the weather, or long term changes, as we’ve seen with the record industry, which took about 16 years to catch up with how people were consuming music in a post-internet age.

When you experience a setback, minor or major, it’s not game over. You may need to rethink how you’re approaching your work, you may need to strip a project down to its essential components, but rare are the circumstances where your only choice is to simply give up. Keeping a contingency plan in place, and learning how to adapt on the fly will help you weather almost any setback.

One of the best things that you can do to avoid injury and illness on the job is to simply encourage good health in the workplace. There are a number of ways to do this without breaking the bank, without having to hire a whole team of personal trainers, and truth be told, without having to put all that much effort forth. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Providing Healthy Food

Keeping healthy snacks stocked in the break room is a great way to encourage your employees to eat a little better. When you leave the office, hungry, looking for a bite, you’re likely to grab a pastry, a burger, a soda, but who can turn down a free meal at the office, even if that meal happens to be a salad and a bottle of water?

Rewards for Healthy Behavior

A fifty dollar gift certificate now and then is a small investment to make in order to encourage employees to stay fit. You can give out a monthly reward to workers who walk or bicycle to work or make the switch from coffee and energy drinks to water.

Underworked and Reasonably Paid

Some employers feel that they’re saving money by paying people less. The fact is that someone who will accept half as much will take three times as long to do the job. This is bad for your bottom line and bad for employee health. You need people who are efficient enough that they won’t need to do overtime and skip lunch breaks in order to meet a deadline.

Go Above and Beyond in Health Coverage

There are minimum requirements for certain businesses when it comes to employee health care. Meeting those standards is step one. You may be able to do a lot of good for your business and for your people by taking it to step two, and seeing where you can surpass expectations. Minimal coverage means that your people are covered should something happen. Going a little farther means that your employees won’t hesitate to get regular checkups and keep themselves in tip-top condition.

There’s that saying: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Maybe you can, say, make accommodations for your assistant once they develop carpal tunnel, but it may be wiser to simply ensure that they take breaks now and then so that they never develop the condition in the first place.

A common misunderstanding has it that if your business isn’t worth anything yet, then you don’t need any sort of insurance whatsoever. The fact of the matter is that if your business isn’t worth anything, then people will come after you. You’re going to at least need some basic liability insurance very early on, as soon as you can afford it, in fact, because even if your business is just you in a garage, somebody could still slip and twist their ankle walking up your driveway.

Beyond basic liability, what is there to protect? Do you really need to insure a used laptop and a $50 particle-board desk? Maybe not. But there are some steps you will want to take to protect yourself in the early stages, even before there’s much of a business to insure:

• Incorporate your business. If you are the sole proprietor, then you are the target if your business is sued. This means that your house and car and other assets are all up on the chopping block. When you incorporate your business, putting ownership under a trust, then you and your business are separate legal entities, and you put far less at risk in the early days of building your business.
• Invest in cyber-security early on. The last thing you need is for someone to hack into your files when you do not yet have the money or the resources to do something about it.
• Talk with a lawyer the minute a consultation is in the budget. Every product, every service brings its own legal risks with it, and you won’t know exactly what those risks are until you do a one or two hour consultation with a lawyer. Some lawyers may even offer this service for free so that you’ll keep them in mind when it’s time to commission their services. You will want to speak with a local attorney, as you will be under the jurisdiction of local laws.

In short: Even if you don’t think your business is worth protecting, you are. You don’t want to get into trouble with the IRS and have them garnishing your wages for the next twenty years over a failed business venture you made in your twenties.

You don’t want to lose your house to someone who injured themselves delivering food to your home office. Even if your business is nothing but a card and a website, it makes you a target, and you need to protect yourself.

There is no such thing as an industry where you will never need to adapt to the times. If you’ve been selling, say, pipe tobacco, a sort of old-fashioned product, something that is of more interest to retirees than it is to millennials, you’re still looking at a market that has shifted from being current and trendy to nostalgic, even if you’ve been selling to the exact same customers for forty years.

Even when an industry itself does not change, the culture surrounding it changes, the context changes. The Mona Lisa is still the Mona Lisa either way, but it will look much different in an antique hand-carved wooden frame than it will in a modern frame made of polished aluminum.

In other words, we all need to adapt to the times, even when our way of adapting is actually to not change at all.

Consider William Gaines, the late publisher of MAD Magazine. Part of the magazine’s appeal was that it was cheap in every way. The humor took cheap shots at celebrities and politicians, the cover price was cheap, and it was printed on the lowest quality paper available. At one the paper that the magazine was printed on actually became quite expensive, and Gaines wound up paying double for rough, flimsy newsprint rather than upgrade to a better quality of paper for less money. Higher quality paper would have actually been cheaper, but MAD’s readers would not have recognized it as feeling cheap. William Gaines actually had to change with the times behind the scenes in order to keep his product from changing.

On the other end of this spectrum you have the record industry. Music companies have been dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age. Napster went live in the Summer of 1999. The iTunes store didn’t debut until April 2003. In the meantime, record companies sabotaged their own PR department by suing teenagers for downloading music. If a company took four years to adapt in the 2010’s, they’d be out of business before they ever had a chance to change their model. By 2014, 35 billion songs had been sold through the iTunes store. Imagine how much bigger that number would be had they jumped on the idea back in 1999.

You might not need to change your product or your brand identity, you don’t need to figure out how to make antique furniture “hip” if you’re courting middle-aged professionals rather than young people. But the times are changing, and if you don’t adjust, you won’t be able to maintain the degree of success you currently enjoy.

Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gaines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster