Avoid claims on your insurance
This article includes tips and advice on how to avoid claims on
your insurance. If a client should try to sue you, professional
liability insurance would help protect you. However, most people
would prefer to try and avoid a claim altogether. These quick and
easy tips could help you minimise your risks.
If you had to defend a compensation claim from a client,
insurance would take care of the costs, but the process would also
be very time-consuming and stressful. So avoiding the claim in the
first place is usually the best for all concerned.
A lot of the claims we see from our clients could have been
mitigated, or maybe even avoided completely with a few simple steps
being put in place by the client. Here are some tips that virtually
any professional could put in place.
Keep notes and work to a brief
If you work with corporate or business clients as a consultant,
we see a lot of claims where there is some ambiguity about the work
that should be carried out. Often, any confusion can be avoided by
working to a detailed brief.
If a client is unwilling to provide a detailed brief for you,
there is nothing to stop you preparing one, and sending it back to
them for their approval. That way, you are still working to an
agreed brief and if the client changes their mind later on, or
realises that they have made a mistake, they are less likely to be
able to pin the blame on you.
It is equally important to make notes of any subsequent
conversations you have with clients, be it by phone or face to
face. Anything that’s not in writing could be construed in any
number of ways by your client. So although you may feel a bit of a
‘jobsworth’ by putting everything in writing, it’s important to
consider the risks of leaving things up in the air.
Keep your place of work tidy
There are plenty of good reasons to do this already, such as
presenting a professional image, but it can also have implications
for the safety of your clients when they visit you.
If a client tripped over a briefcase you’ve left lying around or
injured themselves in any other way whilst meeting you on business,
you could be held liable for their injuries and any other costs
such as loss of income.
If the worst should happen, it is worth taking down as many
details as you can immediately while they are fresh in your mind,
and maybe even take a photo of the scene and cause of any accident,
as this could help to defend a claim.
Be mindful of copyright
A lot of clients we speak to are surprised when we tell them
that breach of copyright is the cause of a lot of claims. If you
use any photography or text on your website or within promotional
material, you should be very careful to ensure that they are not
subject to any copyright or licence agreements.
It’s easy to copy and paste photos you find on other websites to
use on your own, but it’s equally easy for the owner of those
photos to track you down if you use their photos without their
permission. Google Images is one way that people can easily track
down illegal use of their photos.
It’s equally easy to track down unlicenced use of text on your
site, through websites such as ‘Copyscape’, which scans the content
of websites and quickly shows up any websites with substantially
similar text on them.
Good quality stock images are cheaply available online nowadays,
so a professional looking website or printed document can be
produced cheaply without leaving yourself open to a compensation
claim.
Client confidentiality
Most clients seem aware of the need for client confidentiality,
but we do still see claims where confidentiality has been breached
unintentionally.
If you do see clients who you also know on a personal level,
it’s important to keep clear boundaries between your work and
personal relationships. Anything that clients disclose to you in
your professional capacity must be treated as confidential, and if
you chat informally with a mutual friend about your client, it’s
important to make sure that conversation doesn’t stray in to any of
these confidential areas.
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