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If you’re a freelancer or business owner/operator working from home, it’s important to have some strategies in place to keep you personally safe at work. These might include 1) OH&S rules for physical safety, 2) safe strategies for meeting clients at appropriate times and venues, and 3) being a good judge of character and relying on your intuition.

OH&S

If you’re a freelancer or home-based business owner, you need to make sure your office is a safe place to work. For information about what to include in your OH&S policy, go to: Freelancers and sole traders: OH&S in the workplace.

Where and when is it safe to meet clients?

If you’re freelancer or home-based business operator who provides services to the public you’ll sometimes need to meet clients face to face; for example, if you’re an editor you may want to consult with them face to face about editing their manuscript.

But have you decided where and when it’s safe and appropriate meet your clients? Whether you should take extra precautions when arranging to meet some clients? Should you meet in your office? Their office or, if they don’t have an office, their home? Or would it be more appropriate, and safer, to meet them in a public place such as a library meeting room or a quiet cafe?

Are you, the freelancer or business-owner, male or female? Is your client male or female? Does it matter?

Safety first for female freelancers

Go to: Safety for female freelancers and sole traders

Safety first for all editors and freelancers

Not everyone who needs editing or other consultancy services is going to be the sort of person you can safely meet in your home-based office or in their home.

Before telling a client your address or inviting them to your home-based office, you need to have communicated with them, via telephone, for long enough to be able to gauge whether they’re the sort of person you can safely invite into your home.

If you’re a sole trader or freelancer working from home, don’t advertise your office address. That way, the only time a client can drop in unannounced will be when you have told them your address.

If you have a face to face meeting with someone you are not sure it is safe to meet in your office or in their home,  arrange to meet them somewhere public.

When I meet my clients face to face, I usually meet them in a library where there are private or more public meeting places available, or if they run a business,  in their office.  Depending on the type of job and client and the topic of your meeting, a quiet cafe might also be an appropriate meeting place to have a  meeting or consultation.

It is my policy to never consult with clients in their own homes. But if you are absolutely sure the client is ‘safe’, you might choose to do that.

How well do you know your client?

How well do you need to know your client before inviting them to your home-based office?

• If you’ve met the client before in another location and feel you know them reasonably well, and that they’re safe to meet alone in your office, and if you know you are a good judge of character, then it’s probably safe to invite them.
• If you’ve been talking to the client via telephone or online and feel you know them pretty well, and there have been no red flags raised by their comments or manner, you can meet them in your home-based office. However, if you are a female freelancer, don’t arrange to do this unless you have ‘back up’ support at home (for example, a big dog or a family member) for protection.
• If the person is a well-known professional and has  a good reputation you can fairly safely invite them into your home-based office.

The importance of intuition

Regardless of whether you’re male or female, you shouldn’t be meeting clients alone anywhere unless you have good intuition and use it.

Go to: Editing consultants and freelancers: the importance of intuition

Check out my other articles about the challenges of working from home:

• Work-life balance when working from home 
• Managing your sole trader business.