Think of these scenarios. You go on vacation, only to find your house
burglarized and emptied of its content when you return. Or you go to watch a
movie, then return to a house gutted by fire. Or maybe, a hurricane comes and
floods your house. Sounds far-fetched? Don't be too sure.
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If disaster strikes your home, chances are it will also wipe out your
home-based business. It is heartbreaking to see months or years of hard work go
down the drain simply because you never factored in your planning process the
occurrence of disasters, accidents and thefts.
Throw out that "It won't happen to me"¨ thinking, because it can!
Here are some ways you can protect your home office and your business:
Carefully plan the lay-out of your
office.
Some home offices I visited
are like accidents waiting to happen. Wires are all over the place, papers and
books are piled all over the floor, or there are too many electrical equipment
plugged into one electrical socket. Not only are these kinds of home offices
prone to fire, but you can be liable if a customer trips on your books and has a
concussion.
Avoid potential safety hazards in your office.
Stop for a moment and look
around you. Study how things can be improved. Pile books and magazines in an
area with little foot traffic. If you must have wires traveling from one part
of the room to the other, tape the cords on the floor.
Make your house burglar-proof.
You can never be too sure these days or
your neighbors (or even your customers!). Try to keep a low profile in your
neighborhood: don't announce to just about everyone that you are running a
home business with thousands of dollars worth of equipment. As much as possible,
do not invite clients or visitors to your home. In fact, I know of some
home-based entrepreneur who'd rather meet their clients in a neutral ground,
e.g. the client's office or even Starbucks.
There are other ways to keep burglars away from your house.
- Keep lights
open in the perimeter of your house in the evenings. Light is a natural
deterrent for burglars.
- Invest in a security alarm, particularly if your
house is located in a relatively isolated stretch of the road. Security systems
can often bring down the cost of your homeowner's insurance premiums.
-
Make sure that all windows and doors are locked and the security alarm turned on
before you sleep at night or go out of the house. Avoid keeping house keys in
obvious places, such as under the lamp or on top of the doorframe.
- Make
your doors "pick resistant" by using deadbolt locks. Your doors itself
should be made of strong materials, such as a one-inch thick solid hardwood or
heavy metal.
Get adequate insurance coverage.
Many entrepreneurs think that their
insurance covers everything, only to find that it does not in the event of a
disaster. Some insurance merely covers the structural damage to your home
office.
Make sure that your insurance covers the home-office equipment and other
contents within the office. Get a rider that will cover these costs. Be sure
that you keep a complete inventory of your home office equipment and materials,
by either keeping their purchase invoice, and videotaping or photographing them.
Extra coverage is particularly helpful if you are living in a disaster-prone
area like wildfires, hurricanes, and floods. Consider getting additional
coverage if your home office is located in the basement, to protect your
business from sewage damage. There are also riders that will pay you to relocate
to a temporary office in the event that your home office is destroyed.
Remember to get liability coverage to protect you when clients and customers
visit your home office.
Back-up your data nightly.
Or better yet, back-up your data as soon as
you made any changes on it. Copy your files in a rewritable CDs or Zip disks.
You can never tell when you will have a glitch and would need to restore the
entire site. Or if you are running an online business and using a web host, you
never know what disaster may strike them that will erase your data on their
servers.
One time when the design team uploaded our site, they saw a huge blank space
in what should have been text of an article. They couldn't understand what
happened because the preview page looked just fine, but the page when uploaded
became distorted. Luckily, a back-up was made before the changes were done and
they were able to restore our site.
Keep a back-up copy of your data offsite.
It is not enough that you
back-up your data regularly, you must keep a copy of it offsite ¡V be it in
your car, bank, mother's house, or husband's office. Always photocopy your
most important documents. You may also scan them and put everything in a CD or
Zip disk. If your data is significant, consult with a technology expert on data
storage alternatives. If disaster strikes your home and your office is
destroyed, you will still have your important documents intact.
Consider renting a safety box in your bank.
Corollary to the advice
above, you may wish to rent a safety box to store your most important documents,
such as business registration, tax papers, licenses and others. Safety box
rentals range from $30 to $75 a year, but it can give you a feeling of security.
Don't forget, though, to photocopy documents that you place in your box so
you have a record of what's in there. And of course, do not lose the key!
Maintain an
"evacuation box."
In the same way that I always have a
duffel bag full of clothes that I can grab in case of emergency, I suggest you
put all your important documents in an easy-to-carry box. Put your bills, tax
records, personal documents, insurance policies and others in a box that you can
grab in a hurry in case of emergency. Don't put all the important papers in
the filing cabinet, unless it can easily be pushed in case of emergency. I
personally prefer small rolling file cabinets that can easily be pushed should I
need to run out of the house.
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