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Critical Issue for Home Office Safety

As we've said, tele-workers and after-hours workers are just as likely to have safety concerns as home-based business owners--and according to Debra Dinnocenzo, president of tele-work consultancy ALLearnatives and author of 101 Tips for Telecommuters ($16; Berrett-Koehler), that includes slips, trips, and stumbles as well as external intruders.

Last January, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) issued short-lived guidelines applying its corporate and factory safety rules to America's home-based tele-workers While the controversial directive died days after it was issued, Dinnocenzo says, the point remains: A safe office environment with equally safe ingress and egress zones can help diminish accidents and resulting liability.

"Home office safety is a critical issue to everyone who works from home" Dinnocenzo insists. "Utilizing basic safety guidelines can prevent injury, productivity losses, and property damage--all of which have significant payoff to the individual home office worker, whether or not OSHA mandates it."

Moreover, tele-workers security precautions should extend beyond their physical safety, adds Joe Freeman, CEO of J.P. Freeman Co. Inc., a Newtown, Conn., security consultancy. A regional telephone company recently hired Freeman to research security needs for hundreds of employees who were being sent home to tele-work For example burglar alarm,intruder alarm etc. Their concern? Protection of the often-confidential data ferried in or downloaded to workers' laptops.

"How do you protect e-mail or copyrighted information?" Freeman asks. "We cannot accommodate that policy yet. It doesn't have a clear answer yet." But if there's no single standard, there are several options--such as ZixMail (www. zixmail.com), a secure document delivery, private e-mail, and message-tracking service. For $1 a month, the service safely encrypts information in e-mail messages and attachments.

Scheid is cautious about sensitive data, too. Every other week, she backs up her Macintosh files and takes the resulting Iomega Zip disk to her bank's safe-deposit box. Even when she's out of her office, she leaves its air-conditioning on to ensure that Florida heat and humidity don't damage her system or documents.

Her homeowner's insurance policy has an additional business rider to cover her computer and other office contents. And as added insurance when she works late, her husband, Trip Moore, who works as a banking executive (and sports a black belt in the martial arts), will phone to check up on Scheid. "He'll call from the house, even though it's 30 feet away," she says.

Scheid's insurance coverage bucks the norm for most at-home businesses, according to the Independent Insurance Agents of America Inc. (IIAA). At least 60 percent of in-home businesses are not properly insured--and the lower a home-based business owner's income, the less likely he or she is to have business coverage, the association notes. Even the affluent lack comprehensive insurance, with only 59 percent of home-based entrepreneurs making more than $50,000 annually enjoying adequate business coverage, according to the association's statistics.

Why don't more entrepreneurs carry proper coverage? Money's not the issue; the IIAA reports that few in-home business owners cite money as a significant factor in their decision to forego business insurance. Rather, fully 44 percent of those without coverage thought their regular homeowner's policies also covered their home offices. In many cases, that's a bad assumption.

"Homeowner's policies were never intended to cover business exposures," says Madelyn Flannagan, assistant vice president of research and development with the IIAA. "Consequently, coverage for the items you use in your business--such as computers, fax machines, filing cabinets, tools, and inventory--is limited to $2,500 in your home and $250 away from home under most policies. And your homeowner's coverage provides no liability insurance for your home-based business."