It’s all anyone can talk about – and while we understand the frustrations behind the lack of education and understanding around Coronavirus (and the toilet paper-snatching and disarray it has provoked) steps should still be taken to both educate the audiences available to us (ie. clients and social media followers) as well as prevent rapid spread amongst staff and clients – alleviating the inevitable mass pressure this will apply to our healthcare systems.

Many spas, salons and clinics within our community are already doing a wonderful job when it comes to education and reducing risk of spreading. Here are some of the strategies we’ve seen playing out over the past week:

Informative newsletters
We saw a fabulous example of this from The Dermal Diary last week. The newsletter entitled ‘How we’re maintaining a safe environment for our clients’ reassured clients that there had been no cases presented within the business and listed all steps that had been taken including staff undergoing medical checks, that equipment was being properly cleaned and disinfected between appointments, that Dettol would be provided to all visitors, as well as a point of contact for any concerns or enquiries.

We would definitely recommend this exercise for any spa or skin clinic wishing to set clients’ minds at ease.

If you do put together similar materials for a sendout, don’t forget to syndicate it across your website and social media channels so it can be read and received by a wider audience that may not be subscribed to your newsletters.

Cancellations
We’ve been seeing more and more Instagram posts over the last week from cosmetic businesses that are requesting unwell patients to reschedule their appointments. Some of these ask that patients who have travelled to Iran, Asia or Europe call to reschedule immediately, but with things changing by the hour, more beauty businesses are following suit when it comes to rescheduling.

If you have a regular cancellation policy, we highly recommend dropping this without question for unwell clients – as most businesses are now doing. Even some major hotels are accepting all cancellations without question, free of charge, even with less than 24 hours notice. We understand that this will have a major financial impact on your business, but it goes without saying the safety of your team and your clients supersedes that loss.

The same better-safe-than-sorry policy should of course apply to your staff as well. Be sure to properly communicate to each and every one of your staff that they should not be turning up to work if they feel even the slightest sign of cold or flu. The advice is no longer based on cough or fever, or having recently travelled to a high risk country.

Educate
Many of our readers will get through dozens of clients and patients in any given day, so why not use this platform for good and spread some knowledge? All your clients will be talking about it anyway, so while you’re on the subject, try to distribute as much information as you can around the actual facts when it comes to Coronavirus, how good hand hygiene is everything, how low the risks actually are (particularly for those below 50 years of age) proper mask usage and which ones actually work, and to avoid hoarding groceries at all costs!

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