Question By: Whether an employee is working from home or has returned to the office, an employer must provide a standard of care to its employees. The duty of care requires that a person act toward others and the public with the watchfulness, attention, caution, and prudence that a reasonable person in the circumstances would use. The safety of your workers is still your legal responsibility even when they are working from home.
Working from Home
Working from home raises many challenges for both, employers and employees. In your office, employees will have access to an environment that was designed around their requirements and the work performed.
For example:
• Space will have been allocated based on task requirements.
• Equipment will have been selected based on compliance with regulations and based on quality and ergonomic standards.
• Environmental hazards relating to light, heat, noise, distraction, will be assessed and managed based on the work, the building and the work population
Homeworking Environment
Working from home means that employees are working alone, without any direct supervision, making them a lone worker. This presents its own set of health and safety issues that will need to be addressed in your homeworking risk assessment.
Some tips for preventing, or reducing, stress for homeworkers would be to:
• Advise them to take regular breaks, as well as their lunch break, throughout the working day to go outside and get some fresh air or just step away from their desk and do something else for five minutes.
• Ask them to work in a room, or space in the house, where they would not typically spend their time.
• Don't contact them outside of work hours. If they are a 9-5 employee, then don't call or email them after 5pm or before 9am so they don't feel obliged to respond and still do work during their personal time.
Managing performance:
Monitoring employee activities and performance may be more difficult when employees are not in the office. If homeworking is being considered in the long-term, investing in the right infrastructure is an important factor in its success. It's important to note, that there is more to ergonomics than just improving the physical comfort of employee. Ergonomics is about safely optimising movement.
The specifics are that good ergonomic practices improve workplace productivity and employee morale significantly. With the current situation surrounding Covid-19 both productivity and morale have never been at such risk. The fact that ergonomics can reduce costs while improving production is standing evidence of the fact that it can positively impact the bottom line.
Changes to the guidance from enforcement bodies in light of the pandemic
Covid-19 specific guidance that there will not be the expectation that employers will provide a DSE assessment to every employee during the pandemic. However, this does not reduce the obligation of the employer to appropriately risk assess homeworking on a whole and how employees will be accommodated, with particular attention to vulnerable employees.
There is no explicit obligation for employers to provide office furniture for home workers. Employers should provide workers with advice on completing a display screen equipment (DSE) assessment at home. And where a need is identified, they advise that employers should try to meet those needs where possible. This could mean anything from supplying workers who use laptops with a separate keyboard or mouse, to providing larger items such as ergonomic chairs or height-adjustable desks. Workers should be taking care to identify any safety risks and put in place measures to make them more comfortable.
At Bodybuilt, we are able to support individual or bulk orders on a range of ergonomic task chairs. To find out more or to make an enquiry, visit https://bodybilt.com/do-we-really-need-to-address-homeworker-safety/ for more information.
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