No employer wants to see an employee get hurt on the job. You don’t want to see your employees in pain, and workplace injuries often have long-lasting effects on any business. But accidents are inevitable, and eventually you may find yourself dealing with a workplace injury or illness. This is why workers’ compensation insurance is a vital part of any business’s insurance plan. If you do ever have a workplace accident, there are six things you absolutely have to do.
Business Insurance
Your business is unique and you face your own specific risks and dangers, but we can help make sure you’re protected. Every business needs a business insurance policy that’s customized specifically for its needs. At InsuranceHub, we believe in creating a policy that’s built with your business in mind. We know that insurance can get complicated. So, one of our goals is to make the process as easy as possible.
We want to be more than just an insurance company to you. Whether you need a business owner’s policy, general liability, or property insurance, InsuranceHub is here to help. Each of these types of coverages does something different, but we’ll help you figure out which ones are right for you. You’ve worked really hard to build your business, so let us help you protect it.
How to retain your employees and reduce turnover at your business
Seeing your employees move on from your company is bittersweet. You’re happy that they found an opportunity and that they’re making a forward move in their careers, but…why’d they have to leave? What are you going to do now that you have a vacant position? It’s back to the drawing board of hiring, and that means advertising the job, interviewing, onboarding, and training. It also means being prepared to handle hiring risks. Yikes. On top of that, the employees who leave know how things work. They’re efficient, and their experience is invaluable.
It’s important that you’re able to keep your employees at your company. In order to make your company the best place to ever work, it’s important that you take steps to keep people at your business – and here are some tips to do just that.
Tips for keeping your employees safe while they handle cash
The world sometimes seems like it’s driven by money. If you have a business that handles lots of cash on a regular basis, for instance, a restaurant or retail store, you understand. But as great as money is, having cash on-hand creates risks for any business. Cash registers and cash drawers instantly make your business a target for theft and hold-ups. As a business owner, you want your employees to be safe. You don’t want them to get hurt because of the money they handle. We’ve got some tips that will help you establish policies for safe cash handling at your business and lower the risk of something bad happening.
How to avoid employment practices liability when you’re hiring
Hiring can be an ordeal. First, you have to figure out what exactly you need. Then you have to come up with the job description and application. Then there’s interviewing all of the eager applicants who want to wow you. Then there’s the selection process, and on-boarding, and training…Eeesh. The last thing you need to come from all of that hard work is someone bringing a lawsuit against your business for discrimination. Hiring is one of the most eggshell-walking times for employers because of the risk of unintentional discrimination that could result in hefty employment practices lawsuits. We’ve put together some tips for you to make sure that you’re going by the book when you’re hiring so you can avoid employment practices risks.
The oxymoron that is inland marine insurance and why it’s important
Question: What’s inland marine insurance?
Follow-up question: Does it have anything to do with boats, by chance?
Welcome to the world of confusing insurance terminology! Inland marine insurance is a way for businesses to fill gaps that might be in their coverage. Coverage gaps are not good for businesses – you wouldn’t carry an umbrella with holes in it into a rainstorm, would you? Nope. So, the point is that you need to make sure that you don’t have any gaps in your business insurance. Some aspects of your business might not be covered elsewhere in your insurance plan, and that’s where inland marine can help. We’ll explain how.
Why it’s important to prevent workplace bullying
You want your employees to feel welcome, safe, and happy when they come to work. You want the sight of your workplace to make them smile, and you want them to have camaraderie with their coworkers. In an ideal world everyone would get along perfectly and there would never be any drama within your team. But that’s not always the case. If you thought that bullying stops at the playground, think again. It can happen and does happen all-too-often in the workplace.
While harassment and bullying at the workplace can have many different forms, it’s usually considered to be an instance in which someone is using power or intimidation to hurt someone else. Sometimes the behavior is not intentional, but often it is. And that’s why you need to both take a stand against bullying and take steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.
Bullying at the workplace can have serious negative effects on the target’s mental, emotional, and even physical health. It can lead to feelings of low self-worth, depression, anxiety, and even headaches in the person being bullied. For you as an employer, the cost of bullying can come in the form of lawsuits if the behavior goes ignored, but there are other effects that are far-reaching and can seriously hurt your business. Let’s take a look at some of them and then talk about how you can prevent bullying in your workplace.
Does my business need bailee insurance?
As a business owner, you know that you need to make sure you’re protected from all potential risks. Your building is covered by property insurance, your employees are covered by workers’ compensation insurance, your clients are covered by general liability. But what about the things that don’t strictly belong to you? If your business stores, cleans, repairs, services, or otherwise holds on to your clients’ property, you’re instantly put at risk. If you do computer repairs, for example, chances are that your client wouldn’t be too happy if your sprinklers went berserk and fried their laptop, would they?
To protect your business from the risk that comes along with keeping your clients’ possessions in your care, custody, and control (basically a fancy way of saying they’re trusting you to keep their belongings safe) you might want to consider bailee insurance.
Does my small business need umbrella insurance?
Some claims are just too big for normal insurance. As a business owner, you probably don’t want to think worst-case-scenario about a huge disaster or lawsuit befalling your business. It’s easier to shut those things out of our minds. But the truth is that it might happen. Big losses, though they might have a low probability of happening, do happen. And when they do they can be absolutely devastating.
That’s why there’s umbrella insurance. What does umbrella insurance do, exactly? And why do you need it for your business? We’ll explain what umbrella insurance can do for your business and why you might want to consider it.
How to defuse social media nightmares at your business
Follow me on (insert various social media platforms here)! How many times do we hear or read that in a day? No matter how hard we try, it’s impossible to escape the reach of social media. Businesses have also hopped on the social media bandwagon to build their brands and reach out to potential customers – if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, right? Along with other technology risks that businesses face, there are specific social media risks to be considered. What if you get negative comments or trolls on your social media pages? What if you’re facing a social media disaster? You need to have a plan to deal with the negativity you’ll inevitably find online.
We’ve got some tips to help you create an effective crisis/damage control plan for your social media and online presence. The trick is to be ready for a disaster before it happens – scrambling never did anyone any good.
Are your temporary workers covered by your business’s insurance?
Sometimes there just aren’t enough bodies around to get all the work done that needs to get done. If you find yourself shorthanded, you might be considering taking on some temporary workers from a staffing agency. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement – the employee gets some work, you get an extra set of hands to help out, and you save yourself the trouble of having to go through the hiring process to find someone.
But the problem is that since your temporary workers are only temporary, they might not be covered by workers’ compensation insurance. So what would happen if they, say, fell off a ladder? Fell down a flight of stairs? Slipped on a wet tile floor in the break room? The point is that it would be hard to know who’s responsible for covering the medical bills, or the legal costs if they decide to sue.
Anyways, the point is that you need to make sure that you completely understand the relationship between the worker in question and the staffing agency. How the staffing agency classifies them (as a W2 employee or a 1099 worker) affects how they are – or are not – covered by workers’ comp or general liability insurance.
So. With that lead-in behind us, let’s jump in.