Small business owners have been hit hard by the recent coronavirus epidemic. Individuals in these positions are desperately seeking effective survival tips and creative strategies for keeping their businesses alive.
If you own, manage, or work at a day spa, you’ve probably seen the significant impacts brought on by the COVID-19 outbreak firsthand.
For instance, let’s say you run a spa called Delilah’s Glamor Spa. You had a profitable business, a satisfied client base, and a solid group of spa professionals on your team. Then, all of a sudden, you’ve had your doors closed since March due to the global pandemic that’s wildly sweeping the nation.
Although thousands of careers have suddenly moved to a remote work environment in the wake of the coronavirus, spa associates have not been able to transition quite so easily. And with such a (literally) hands-on industry, spas have been one of the slowest to reintegrate into society. Yet, your business needs revenue, your staff needs steady paychecks, and your guests— although they might be making do with at-home facials— are longing to enjoy their spa experiences again.
If you’re looking to re-open your business amid the pandemic, a release of liability waiver might be just the answer you’ve been looking for. Now you might be thinking, “My spa has never required a waiver. Those are for businesses with potential danger, like adventure tour companies!” However, the rise of the coronavirus has led to drastic societal change, and implementing a waiver is one thing you can do to negate some of that impact.
That being said, let’s walk through a few of these best practices for keeping your spa business and your customers safe and happy:
- Educate your staff on health guidelines.
- Take preventative safety measures.
- Consult a lawyer regarding the wording of your waiver.
- Require customers to confirm their health.
- Make use of online liability waivers.
While liability waivers can be a powerful tool for protecting your business from legal issues, it’s not a catch-all solution for working in a potentially dangerous situation. Instead, let’s find out exactly how liability waivers can help you.
1. Educate your staff on health guidelines.
So, you’re probably asking yourself what’s next for your business. You want to re-open, but you don’t want to risk exposing customers to COVID-19 and ending up the defendant in a lawsuit, or worse, spreading an already out of control virus and directly harming your valued guests.
That’s why when you start to consider re-opening, it’s important that you first get your entire staff on board and up to speed with any new rules and regulations. A good place to start for this is with the CDC’s coronavirus guidelines. Then, be sure to put some spa-wide policies in place concerning health and safety, including:
- Don’t come to work while sick. This is one of the most important things for your staff to understand. Oftentimes, employees decide they can “work through it” despite showing symptoms of illness in order to avoid leaving the business understaffed. However, this can be extremely dangerous amid a global health pandemic. Consider opting for more flexible time off and sick day policies during this time.
- Know what to do if customers display symptoms. Although it’s a good idea to have guests confirm their state of health prior to arrival, it’s equally important that your staff is up-to-speed on the store policy concerning key symptoms of the coronavirus (such as fever and cough). Should your staff grab a supervisor or try to handle the problem on their own? Make sure these questions are answered beforehand!
- Take safety measures seriously. It can be easy to let certain safety precautions slip by, especially when trying to get through guest after guest in the most time-efficient manner possible. Make sure your staff knows that safety is more important than timeliness in this scenario.
- Be sure to have each guest sign a waiver. Especially if this is a practice that is new for your business, making sure each customer signs a release of liability waiver might seem overwhelming. However, it’s important that this step does not fall through the cracks. Also, be sure that if customers have questions regarding the waiver, your team can respond or direct them to someone more knowledgeable on the subject. With a digital waiver, you can even embed a quick video explaining the risks involved to make things easier on your employees!
More than likely, your staff is itching to get back to work. After all, they need the paycheck and probably even enjoy the work that they do. However, making sure that even your most inexperienced staff is well-trained in regards to new safety standards is the key to maintaining a successful spa experience.
2. Take preventative safety measures.
The spa and wellness industry is putting safety precautions in place as a whole to ensure the health of both staff and guests. However, the responsibility really falls on each business as they resume guest care. Here are a few tips for keeping your employees and customers safe amid an uncertain time:
- Require masks. Encourage guests to bring their own masks or face coverings prior to arrival. However, for guests who do not have access to or choose not to bring their own, be sure to have extra disposable masks on hand. Require guests and employees to wear face coverings at all times!
- Enhance sanitation practices. Be sure to sanitize everything guests come into contact with between helping individual customers. If you’re unsure whether a guest touched something, sanitize it anyway just to be sure.
- Limit guests in waiting rooms. Limit the number of guests in your facility at one time by suggesting (or requiring) appointments, employing a virtual waiting room, or scheduling a buffer between guests to get your stations sanitized and reset.
It’s important to remember that release of liability waivers hardly protect against gross negligence. That means that even if a guest signs a waiver but it comes to light that your business has not practiced proper protocol, you may still be at fault legally.
Although it would be best if none of your staff or guests came in contact with the virus, it’s unrealistic to expect that to happen. In order to reduce the risks and negative consequences, just be sure to follow these extra safety protocols. After all, it’s better to be safe than sorry!
3. Consult a lawyer regarding the wording of your waiver..
When it comes to actually crafting your release of liability waiver, consider consulting an expert. Otherwise, you risk going through the trouble of having guests sign a document that has no legal standing in a court of law. These are a few general rules to be mindful of as you (or your lawyer) create your release of liability waiver:
- Be sure customers acknowledge any risks (i.e. coronavirus).
- Specify which rights the customer waives by signing.
- Use clear, easy-to-understand language.
If you’re new to using liability waivers, you might be wondering whether a digital form holds the same legal power as a typical paper form. The answer is yes! Thanks to the E-sign Act of 2000, digital waivers do in fact share the same validity as their physical counterpart— so long as the waiver meets certain standards.
For one thing, the waiver must be presented to the participant in an unalterable digital format. Be sure to talk with your lawyer on these points as well to make sure your new digital waiver meets all necessary standards!
Even if your spa has already been using liability waivers to negate legal risk prior to the coronavirus outbreak, it’s a good idea to have your lawyer look over any new drafts you create. Remember that because there is no legal precedent concerning liability waivers regarding COVID-19, it’s crucial that you seek legal advice on creating the most comprehensive document possible.
4. Require customers to confirm their health.
Although the legal responsibility tends to fall on the business, it’s important that your guests realize their role in public health and safety as well. That’s why it’s a good idea to require guests to provide a short history of their health in the last few weeks. At a minimum, make sure each guests confirms that:
- They are not showing symptoms.
- They have not traveled to areas of high infection in the last 14 days.
- They have not come into contact with anyone showing symptoms in the last 14 days.
Not only will this encourage guests to consider the impact their prior experiences might have on the employees and other guests, but it can also protect your business from legal action in the case a guest does contract the virus.
For example, a guest might claim they were exposed to COVID-19 while at your spa but had previously been traveling. That would make it a lot harder to prove that the exposure came back to your business!
5. Make use of online liability waivers.
While any sort of release of liability waiver can offer many of these benefits previously discussed, online waivers can take your business protections several steps further. Thanks to their simple collection, organization, and retrieval processes, using digital liability waivers can allow your business to:
- Decrease crowding in waiting areas: Along with encouraging appointments and employing a virtual waiting room, you can further speed up the process and ensure less human contact by allowing guests to sign their waivers ahead of time! Allow users to sign their liability waivers online when creating an appointment, or send a link via text or email to make sure everyone has a chance to sign before arriving.
- Provide a hands-free signing process: There’s no need to worry about germs spreading through communal pens and clipboards when you employ online liability waivers. Almost everyone has a smartphone that can be used to sign on their own device. And for those who do need a device to sign the waiver on, you can turn a tablet into a waiver kiosk that can easily be wiped down after each use! Learn more about how hands-free waivers work with this helpful guide from Smartwaiver.
- Ensure strengthened security measures: What if a guest signs your paper waiver, only to go back on it in court and claim it was fabricated afterwards? There’s no need to worry about that with automatic photo capture capabilities offered by digital waivers!
What if a guest signs your waiver, which then gets lost in a sea of paper folders and filing cabinets (or accidentally thrown away)? Again, no need to worry with online waivers! Guest data can be automatically transferred to an organized, easy-to-use database.
Like we mentioned before, maintaining smooth business operations is dependent upon the tools and resources at your disposal. By using such tools, you can set up your business for sustainability, or even growth, during this time. Check out this explainer on how to embed your digital waiver within your business website to receive all of these perks and more.
While digital waivers can be a vital instrument in protecting your business from the coronavirus, you might also want to look into the other various ways they can boost your daily operations. For example, every time a customer completes an online waiver, you receive a good amount of data on that participant that can be collected, organized, and used for marketing purposes— which will be crucial for getting the word out about your reopening. Check out this AccuData guide on data marketing strategies for more information!
In this time of uncertainty, it’s important that you leverage every tool you have. By taking safety precautions and using valuable resources such as digital waivers, you can be sure that your business stands out among competitors and operates in a sustainable way. Good luck!
Daryl McCarl is the Director of Business Development at Smartwaiver, the leading digital waiver service trusted by thousands of organizations around the world. www.smartwaiver.com
