20 Aug BITTEN BY THE LEGAL COVID BUG?
In the midst of the covid euphoria quite a number of entrepreneurs may have overlooked the legal ramifications that may be perched quietly in the business environment waiting for the right moment to erupt. Without a doubt nine out of ten consumer—facing businesses have been impacted by the safe-keeping of orders, challenges with supply chains or even reconfigured approaches to use products in a now socially-distant economic space.
Faced with these challenges, entrepreneurs now need to step back and exercise due diligence in spite of loud cries for a speedy resolve in these uncertain moments. Begin by continually documenting your efforts on how you responded to issues that arose during the pandemic; this is necessary to validate why certain decisions were taken.
For entrepreneurs with employees, it’s important to keep abreast of changes in employee benefits particularly in relation to renewed business hours; exercise caution before making changes to policies that directly affect customers such as refunds and exchange of products or service modifications – if in doubt consult with an attorney or the Consumer Affairs Division in the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Implementing a viable and effective document retention policy can be challenging but necessary in the area of archival and/or deletion of emails for example after lengthy periods.
Like the generic environment, new considerations have been unearthed for recalibrating the ecosystem; however these vary from industry to industry and so entrepreneurs must seek professional advice if required to avoid unwelcomed legal entanglement.