A Guide to 'Duty of Care' for a Company with Global Employees

Why Corporate 'Duty of Care' Fails the Modern Global Professional

The traditional corporate safety net doesn't just fall short for a global professional like you; it is fundamentally misaligned with your reality as a Business-of-One. Relying on this obsolete playbook ignores your most pressing anxieties and leaves you dangerously exposed. The entire model is built on a set of flawed assumptions that no longer serve you.

• The Audience Mismatch. Standard duty of care advice is written for HR departments managing armies of employees, not for a proactive professional who must act as their own risk manager, legal counsel, and CFO. Recommendations to "establish a crisis management team" are useless for an individual. This advice assumes you are a passive subject to be managed, not the CEO of your own global enterprise.
• Ignoring the Real Anxiety. Corporate guides fixate on dramatic, low-probability events like natural disasters. They completely miss the chronic, high-stakes compliance anxiety that defines your world. For a U.S. citizen working abroad, the persistent threat isn't a hurricane; it's the non-willful penalty for an FBAR filing failure, which can exceed $16,000 per violation. This is the landscape of remote work compliance that corporate policies were never designed to navigate.
• The Actionability Gap. You are consistently told what large companies do—they conduct risk assessments, implement support systems, and create evacuation plans. But you are never told how to translate these principles into concrete, practical actions for yourself. The advice provides a high-level overview but offers no scalable toolkit for a solo operator, leaving you with concepts instead of commands.
• A Contradiction of Values. At its core, the traditional duty of care model is about dependency and top-down protection. This philosophy directly conflicts with the values of autonomy, control, and self-reliance that drive you. You didn't choose this path to be cared for; you chose it to be in command. The goal isn't to find a better corporate safety net—it's to be empowered to weave your own.

The Duty of Care Flywheel: A New Framework for Your Business-of-One

Weaving your own net requires a new model built for autonomy, not dependence. It’s time to replace the passive, corporate concept of duty of care with an active system you control. Forget checklists you’re handed and think instead of a flywheel: a heavy, powerful wheel that takes effort to spin, but once in motion, generates its own momentum. This is your new operating system for a resilient global career—a self-reinforcing framework designed to turn reactive anxiety into proactive control.

The Duty of Care Flywheel is built on three pillars that work in concert, with progress in one area making it easier to build momentum in the others.

• Pillar 1: Compliance Resilience (The Financial Fortress): This is your foundation. It’s about proactively shielding your business from the catastrophic legal and financial risks that corporate policies ignore. Mastering remote work compliance isn’t just about avoiding penalties; it’s about creating the financial stability required to operate with confidence anywhere in the world.
• Pillar 2: Operational Security (The Personal Shield): Here, we translate abstract corporate safety principles into a practical, individual toolkit. This pillar addresses your physical, digital, and medical well-being with concrete actions, creating a robust shield that protects you and your business from disruption, no matter your location.
• Pillar 3: Professional Fortitude (The Business Moat): True well-being for a Business-of-One must include the health of the business itself. This pillar extends the concept of protection to ensure the long-term sustainability of your enterprise. It’s about building a resilient business that can withstand client turnover, market shocks, and unpredictable challenges, securing your professional future.

This isn't a linear process; it's a dynamic cycle. Building your Financial Fortress gives you the resources and peace of mind to forge your Personal Shield. With that shield in place, you can confidently make the bold moves required to dig a deep Business Moat. Each pillar reinforces the others, spinning the flywheel faster until it propels your career forward with stability and strength.

Pillar 1: Building Your Financial Fortress with Compliance Resilience

The journey from passive subject to active CEO begins not with grand gestures, but with mastering the granular, often intimidating, details of your financial and legal footprint. This is the foundation of your flywheel. We address the primary anxiety that corporate policies ignore: the fear of catastrophic compliance failure. As Don D. Nelson, a CPA with decades of experience in international tax, wisely puts it, "The number one reason to be proactive with your tax planning is to avoid surprises. The second reason is to save money. And the third reason is to sleep well at night."

Here’s how to lay the foundation for a fortress that lets you sleep well at night:

• Master Your Tax Residency: The common "183-day rule" is a dangerously simplistic starting point. True compliance requires tracking your presence across multiple, overlapping jurisdictions simultaneously. Think of it as watching several clocks at once: the Schengen Area's 90/180 rule, the 330 full days required outside the U.S. for the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE), and the specific residency thresholds for each country you inhabit. A dedicated spreadsheet or app transforms this complex web of rules from a terrifying unknown into a manageable set of metrics.
• De-risk Your Invoicing: For B2B clients in the European Union, a technically perfect invoice is critical for protecting your cash flow. Before issuing one, verify your client's VAT ID using the European Commission's VIES database. Your invoice should then explicitly state that the "reverse charge" mechanism applies, which shifts the responsibility for VAT reporting from you to your client. This single step removes your obligation to register for and remit VAT in your client's country—a crucial simplification.
• Conquer U.S. Reporting Obligations: For U.S. citizens, one of the most significant financial risks is the failure to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR). If the combined total of your foreign financial accounts exceeds $10,000 at any point during the year, you must file. The penalties are severe; non-willful violations can cost over $16,000 per year, while willful violations can escalate to over $165,000 or 50% of the account balance. Turn this threat into a simple task: set a personal alert when your aggregate balance hits $8,000. This gives you a comfortable buffer to prepare and file, neutralizing the risk through proactive management.
• Understand Permanent Establishment (PE) Risk: This is the "unknown unknown" that can create enormous liability for you and your clients. PE is a tax concept where your activities in a foreign country could be deemed significant enough to create a taxable presence for your client's business. Triggers can include signing contracts on their behalf or working exclusively for one client in a way that makes you a "dependent agent." Understanding the basic principles allows you to structure your contracts and work patterns to avoid inadvertently creating a tax nexus for your clients, protecting those crucial relationships.

Pillar 2: Forging Your Personal Shield with Operational Security

Once you've walled off the major financial and legal threats, the next layer of self-reliance involves protecting your most critical asset: you. Forging your Personal Shield means translating corporate risk management principles into a practical toolkit for a Business-of-One. This is about taking direct control of your physical, digital, and medical well-being, ensuring you have a robust answer to the question, "What happens if...?"

• Build Your Solo Emergency Plan: A corporation has a crisis team; you need a lifeline. Designate at least two trusted contacts, ideally in different time zones for broader availability, who can act on your behalf. Arm this personal team with a single, password-protected document containing digital copies of your passport and visas, key contact numbers (bank, insurance, embassy), and a clear communication protocol specifying when and how they should act if you become unreachable.

• Assemble Your Essential Insurance Stack: Relying on the wrong insurance can be financially catastrophic. The coverage you need is not a single product but a strategic stack of three distinct shields.

• Fortify Your Digital Security: Your duty of care extends to protecting your clients' sensitive information. Working from cafes, coworking spaces, and hotels exposes you to significant digital threats. Basic cyber hygiene is a core professional responsibility.

• Use a VPN (Virtual Private Network): On any network you don't personally control, a reputable VPN is mandatory. It encrypts your connection, shielding your data from interception on public Wi-Fi.

• Enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): For every critical service—email, banking, cloud storage—enable 2FA. This second layer of verification makes it exponentially harder for unauthorized users to access your accounts.

• Use Encrypted Storage: Store sensitive documents—client contracts, invoices, and your emergency plan—in an encrypted cloud service or on an encrypted external drive. If a device is lost or stolen, the data remains inaccessible.

Pillar 3: Digging Your Business Moat with Professional Fortitude

True well-being for a Business-of-One must include the health of the business itself. Digging a Business Moat means extending your personal duty of care to the enterprise that sustains you. This is about building a resilient operation that can withstand the inevitable shocks of an independent career, from client disputes to market downturns.

• Create Ironclad Contracts: Your Master Services Agreement (MSA) is your single most important risk management tool. It should clearly define the scope of work to prevent "scope creep," outline precise payment terms to ensure healthy cash flow, and specify the governing law for any disputes. Many freelancers resist contracts, seeing them as adversarial. But as commercial art lawyer Jon Sharples notes, this is a flawed perspective. "Contracts are a great leveler. Where there is an imbalance of power, it always suits the more powerful party not to have a contract. A contract is a way for someone with less power to level the playing field."
• Diversify to Mitigate Risk: Relying on a single client is a common and dangerous vulnerability. A fantastic client can have their budget cut, change strategic direction, or get acquired, causing your entire income to disappear overnight. To build resilience, consciously diversify your client base. A crucial rule of thumb is to ensure no single client accounts for more than 40-50% of your annual income. This buffer ensures the loss of one contract doesn't become a catastrophic event for your business.
• Fund Your Own Safety Net: As a solopreneur, you are your own HR department. You alone are responsible for building the long-term financial security a traditional employer provides. For U.S. citizens, this means contributing to a retirement vehicle designed for the self-employed, like a SEP-IRA or a Solo 401(k), which allow for significantly higher contribution limits. Furthermore, investigate private disability insurance. This coverage replaces a portion of your income if you become unable to work due to illness or injury, protecting your financial stability when you are most vulnerable.

You Are the CEO of Your Own Security

These are more than just items on a tactical checklist; they are the building blocks of a profound shift in mindset. For the Global Professional, the traditional concept of duty of care—something passively received from an employer—is obsolete. You are not an employee waiting for protection. You are the CEO of your career, and you must become the architect of your own security.

This is not a burden. It is the very definition of the autonomy you sought. By systematically addressing risk, you trade anxiety for agency. The framework is a continuous, reinforcing cycle:

1. Your Financial Fortress turns the terrifying "unknowns" of global compliance into manageable administrative tasks, creating the stability to operate with confidence.
2. Your Personal Shield translates abstract corporate safety principles into a tangible, individual reality, ensuring you have a plan and the resources to handle a crisis.
3. Your Business Moat extends this protection to your enterprise, using strong contracts and client diversification to build a career that is not just adventurous but sustainable.

By intentionally building these three structures, you redefine duty of care on your own terms. It becomes an active strategy—a system you design, execute, and own. You are no longer dependent on an outdated model that was never designed for you. You are building a resilient, independent, and secure enterprise of one, empowered by the very control you set out to achieve.