Another threat to the well-being of you and your business is
your office itself-that is, the potential safety hazards therein.
Cords and stacks of papers may look innocent enough, but take a
spill or ignite some papers, and you'll have a potential
disaster on your hands.
"The key to avoiding accidents in the home office is common
sense," says Attard, whose home has had two close calls with
fire. "Take the extra minute and think about what you're
doing. Keep the wires out of the way. Make sure you don't have
too many things plugged in to the same socket."
If necessary, enlist a professional. When Kanarek moved into her
home-an older house built in the 1950s-she had an electrician
examine the wiring to make sure the outlets could handle office
equipment and wouldn't pose a fire hazard.
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And let's not forget the not-so-obvious threat of an
ergonomically incorrect office. While not always recognized as a
safety hazard, a bad desk chair can put you out of commission,
something that can kill a self-employed income. "What you save
on office furniture, you'll spend at the doctor's,"
says Kanarek.
Adds Attard, "Very often, self-employed [people] don't
have disability insurance-so if you can't work, you
don't work."
Protective Measures
You've safety-checked your office, and all fire and
clumsiness hazards are under control. You meet people outside your
office, and your office is ergonomically correct. Now it's time
to prepare for the unexpected, and there's nothing quite as
unexpected as a plane crashing into your house.
Yes, we're back to Bette Price. What did she do right to
prepare for such a disaster, what did she do wrong, and how has she
changed her habits?
What she did right. "If I
hadn't really developed a business plan and worked from that
plan, I probably would've darn near gone out of business,"
says Price, whose Addison, Texas, company, The Price Group, offers
marketing, management and leadership consulting services.
"Business plans aren't necessarily just for going to the
bank and getting money. They're to make sure you have a
business model and follow it and that you have alternate plans in
case everything blows up on you."
What she did wrong. It's
easy to assume your insurance will cover a crisis-until said crisis
actually happens, and you find you're left out in the cold. Or
in Price's case, left in a cramped, home-office-unfriendly
apartment. "I had discussed my home office [with my insurance
agent], but I never read my policy really well," she says.
"It didn't have a rider on it. If I'd had a home
office rider, I would've been able to relocate everything to a
temporary office, and it would've been paid for. I was really
crippled with the space I had because [my husband and I] ended up
being in a two-bedroom apartment for an extended period of
time."
Options for home office insurance include adding a rider to your
homeowner's policy and a business owner's policy (commonly
known as a BOP). Attard suggests you make sure you're covered
for things like lawsuits from visitors to your home, loss or theft
of your equipment while traveling, and protection in case someone
hurts themselves because of something you've done (for
instance, if you visit a client's office and he or she trips on
the cord from your laptop).
What she changed. Luckily,
Price's office wasn't physically damaged in the accident,
so she didn't lose any important data. But the close call and
damage to other parts of her home led her to adopt some good
habits. She now backs up her data on rewritable CDs and keeps a
copy off-site, and she transfers all her data to her laptop so she
always has it with her. When she travels, she leaves her contact
information and a key to her home with a trusted friend. "I
also make sure I [put] all my current work files in a specific
place," she says, "so if I had an emergency in the house,
I'd be able to just grab everything I'm working
on."
Kanarek also suggests keeping a file of important
information-phone numbers, credit card numbers, etc.-that you can
quickly grab in case of an emergency. She also sends a backup Zip
disk to work with her husband so her key info is always safe.
You should also protect your data by using a UPS
(uninterruptible power supply) product in case of power surges or
blackouts, says Attard. "And if you're running a Web
site," she suggests, "keep a copy of it on-site if
someone else is hosting it. You never know when they're going
to have a problem."
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