Safely
SPEAKING
BY RICK HEIDMAN
Premises liability
by customers to the parts area and shop area. Those areas have a great potential to cause severe injury to someone who isn’t familiar with the surroundings.
A
NY BUSINESS that invites customers onto its premises is required to protect them from injury. Farm equipment dealers are no different – you must protect visitors while they are at your dealership. Injuries to customers in equipment dealerships are quite rare. But given the nature of your business, if an accident does occur the injuries have the potential to be serious. Every business must protect against accidents, such as slips and falls, and your general housekeeping procedures will help protect you against any accident from occurring. A more important concern for your business is to prevent an injury or accident by restricting access
How do you prevent access to restricted areas?
The first step is to post signs stating that only employees are allowed in these areas. Federated Insurance has signs that can be ordered free of charge by our clients to satisfy this requirement. Posting these signs will prevent some customers from accessing restricted areas but not all customers. The second step to restrict access to certain areas is to design your front area in such a way that makes access difficult. Add swinging gates next to a counter or have entryways to the shop or parts area located in a such a way that an employee can monitor who goes where. These types of designs discourage easy access and also allow employees to monitor who is accessing the areas.
…you must protect visitors while they are at your dealership.
Lastly, for any prevention techniques, the critical component of ensuring the success is to have employees enforce the policies that you have created. Any effort will not succeed if your employees ignore them or are not aware of the policy. Train your employees about your policies and remind them occasionally. Sometimes customers need to access these areas. When this occurs, ensure that an employee always accompanies the customer to advise the visitor about any potential hazards.
What do you do if an accident occurs?
Your first consideration is to attend to the injured person. First aid should be provided and, if necessary, an ambulance should be called. Secondly, to help protect you in the event that a lawsuit is filed, you should document the accident scene and the conditions present. Filling out an accident report and, in some instances, taking photographs of the scene will preserve the details of the accident and could help keep the costs of a lawsuit low. Federated Insurance offers a resource to help you manage your premises liability. It is available in Adobe Acrobat format at www.federated.ca in the news section of our loss prevention area. You can also order the booklet, which includes a sample accident report form.
RICK HEIDMAN is a loss prevention program coordinator with Federated Insurance in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He may be reached by calling 800/665-1934 or sending an email to rick.heidman@federated.ca.
6 NAEDA EQUIPMENT DEALER March 2005