Allowing employees to figure from home has notable perks for little business owners, like you. These include promoting a satisfied workforce and lowering on office space expenses. However, among all of the telecommuting fanfare, there are still potential liabilities to think about. This is very true once you have home-based business employees.
Questions you should begin asking yourself include:
- “What concerns should I have?”
- “What guidelines do I need to follow?”
- “Where can I obtain homeworkers insurance?”
Work-from-home employees may expose your company to risks not currently covered by your worker compensation audit. Before you give employees the green light to forge their own paths during a headquarters, familiarize yourself together with your responsibilities as a telecommuting boss.
Steps to Protect Your Work-from-Home Employees & Business
- Ensure that employees’ homes are safe for business. Before they start performing from home, they require that employees suit the health and safety policies of your business. Have your employees fill out a working-from-home safety survey, or do an inspection yourself. Check that furnishings and equipment are ergonomically designed so that the employees can work safely. You’ll also want to ascertain that lighting and ventilation are sufficient.
- Be on the lookout for hazards. These can include exposed extension cords. Be sure that the residence has adequate fire extinguishers and smoke detectors. Once you’ve inspected the office space, take a photo for your records. Every six months, check the work environment to make sure that the worker continues to suits the wants.
- Designate a dedicated work area. If possible, assign the worker to a selected room or area of their home for work. This helps minimize the likelihood of injury claims. It also encourages the worker to line boundaries reception which will motivate them to stay productive.
- Ensure their homeowner’s policy is up-to-date. Require employees to check their homeowner’s insurance coverage. This ensures that their homes and property are going to be covered within the event of injury done during working hours. Have your employees supply you with documentation regarding this and keep it on file.
- Focus on cybersecurity. Ensure that all employee devices including laptops, tablets, and desktops are shielded from intrusion. Have an IT professional found out a secure connection from the employee’s home to your company network. Connections with weak or no security leave your company hospitable hacking. This can put your entire business at risk. Also, insist that only employees use the company’s equipment.
- Stay in direct contact. Unless you check in with offsite employees regularly, you won’t know if they are having difficulties. Stressed workers tend to be less productive and may be susceptible to accidents. Make sure you've got the proper telecommuting tech tools in situ to speak and collaborate together with your work from home employees. Check-in daily and consider fixing weekly or biweekly video calls. This will enable you to see them in their homework environment. Monitoring their progress also will assist you to determine if an employee is best off returning to the onsite office environment.
- Review your insurance. Speak together with your insurance firm about having employees work from home to form sure that you simply are adequately covered during this area. Insurance specialists may advise that you simply obtain management insurance. Such insurance would cover the legal expenses which will arise from having work-from-home employees.
- Create a telecommuting policy. Clear guidelines regarding performing from home can help prevent misunderstandings. It also can help protect you if something goes wrong with a headquarters situation. In your work from home guidelines, detail what's required of your employees. Be sure to incorporate specific work hours, taking regular breaks, and adhering to safety procedures. Also, include employee rights like your workers’ compensation coverage. Have telecommuting employees sign the document. This document should stipulate the precise details of the work-from-home agreement. Always keep these documents on file.
- Communicate that telecommuting is a privilege. Let employees know that you simply are allowing them to figure from home as an employment perk. Make it clear that you have the right to rescind their work-from-home privileges at any time and for any reason. For example, say their home fails to satisfy the required safety requirements or if their work performance suffers. Then you can ask them to return to the office.
Offering employees remote jobs where they need the liberty to figure from the comfort of home can enhance productivity and make your company a desirable place to figure. Understand your responsibilities as an employer of offsite employees. You want to assist protect them and yourself from the liabilities inherent in performing from home. This way your company is sure to reap the benefits of the burgeoning telecommuting movement.
FAQs About Home-Based Business Insurance
Does My Home-Based Business Need Insurance?
Home business owners often believe their general homeowner’s policy thoroughly covers them. This is not always the case. It’s often a good starting point to review your policy. You never want to leave your livelihood up to chance.
This is where additional business insurance policies inherit play for home business owners. These policies can help cover:
- Workplace injuries
- Potential lawsuits
- Office and business equipment
For example, a standard misbelief is that under homeowner’s insurance, your computer and important documents are covered. This is often not the case.
Remember, small businesses are targets for lawsuits. They can often find themselves without proper business insurance coverage. Don’t let that be you and your business.
Do My Remote Employees Require Liability Insurance?
You’ll be doing yourself, your remote employees, and your business a favor by obtaining the proper home-based business insurance coverage. You’ll want extra protection added to your workers’ compensation insurance.
The mentality is simple. If you would like business insurance to guard yourself at your home-based business, you’ll also need it for your remote employees.
An unhappy client could present a lawsuit for the mishandling of sensitive information. This can ultimately cause your business to have to pack up. Be prepared and mitigate your business risks with the proper coverage for remote employees.
Examples of Home-based Insurance
It’s easy to assume your business is satisfactorily insured. However, if you're taking a harder look, there are tons more to think about beyond basic business policies. Consider these coverages for a deeper look:
Business Property Insurance
If you're employed out of home, you’ll need a sort of business property insurance. You can start by taking a full inventory of your physical items and accounting for every one of them. Once you do that, you’ll want to get them insured.
Commercial Auto Insurance
If you’re operating face to face together with your business clients, it’s likely you’re operating a private vehicle or a business-owned vehicle to urge you where you would like to be. This is where commercial auto insurance are often added to your policy. This will help cover your vehicle within the event of work-related auto accidents.
Business Income Insurance
It’s hard to predict a theft or fire. Both of these can cripple small businesses, like you, and impact your bottom line. Prepare for the unexpected with business income insurance. This coverage can help cover lost income when your business suffers a loss.
What If an Employee Is Injured While Working from Home?
Accidents happen during work, and that they can even as easily occur within the home. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), small business owners are responsible for providing employees with safe work environments. All home-based workers have equivalent workers’ compensation benefits as in-office employees.
Cases regarding workers’ compensation have shown that laws tend to ascertain the house offices no differently than office buildings or storefronts. For instance, in the 2011 case of Sandberg v. JCPenney, the court eventually decided in favor of an employee who tripped on her dog while retrieving fabric samples from her garage. She ended up receiving workers’ compensation because she was within the process of working for her employer at the time she sustained the injury.
What If a Customer Visiting a Home Office Is Injured?
If anyone else besides your employee is injured during a headquarters, you continue to could also be held liable. This may also apply if the property owned by others is broken within the headquarters setting. For instance, if a client involves your employee’s headquarters and drops their high-end camera, you'll be held responsible for its replacement. For these reasons, it’s important to have public liability insurance. Check with your insurance carrier to verify that such coverage applies to home offices.
Who Is Responsible If a Telecommuting Employee Damages Property or Equipment?
You may be ready to add coverage to your business policy that helps protect your business equipment not getting used on your business’s property. This can include cell phones, tablets, and laptop computers at the business’s property. However, if work-related damage occurs to the employee’s home, your policy might not cover the loss. This is thanks to most insurance plans covering only a specific place of business.
Before such cases arise, it’s imperative that employees check their homeowner’s coverage. They need to make sure it covers them working from home.
This article provides general information, and will not be construed as specific legal, HR, financial, insurance, tax, or accounting advice. As with all matters of a legal or human resources nature, you ought to consult your own legal counsel and human resources professionals. The Hartford shall not be responsible for any direct, indirect, special, consequential, incidental, punitive or punitive damages in reference to the utilization by you or anyone of the knowledge provided herein.
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