Temporary homeworking and suitable workstations
Remote overnight
Many employees are temporarily working from home due to coronavirus. Some may have access to a suitable desk or workspace; others won’t have a workstation area at all.
Whilst these are unusual times, your health and safety duties and obligations still continue and you must ensure that your employees have a safe system of work.
Assessment needed?
Does this mean that you must arrange to carry out home workstation risk assessments for any employees who are temporarily based at home?
The Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) advice on homeworking during the lockdown makes a clear distinction between those employees who are working from home on a temporary basis and those who are based there permanently.
Temporary arrangements
Where a homeworking arrangement is only a temporary one, the HSE says that there is no increased risk to employees, particularly when it comes to the use of display screen equipment (DSE), e.g. computer monitors.
Tip. For temporary home-based workers it’s not mandatory to carry out a home workstation risk assessment. You should, however, insist that they have a suitable space and safe area to work from home. This is made clear in our homeworking policy (see The next step ).
Best practice advice
The HSE advises that you could still provide temporary homeworkers with advice on completing their own basic workstation assessments, particularly in relation to the safe use of DSE.
Tip. It has created a workstation checklist which you can send to your employees and ask them to follow when setting up and using their temporary homeworking area (see The next step ).
Reduce the risks
Advise your temporary home-based employees to:
- break up long spells of DSE work with rest breaks or changes in activity. This should be for at least five minutes every hour
- avoid awkward, static postures by regularly changing position
- get up and move at regular intervals or do some stretching exercises
- routinely change their eye focus when using DSE or do blinking exercises.
Tip 1. If an employee requires certain specialised DSE or IT equipment, e.g. a larger screen, ergonomic keyboard, etc., you should do your best to supply it or allow them to take items home if they’ve already been issued.
Tip 2. Where an employee is permanently based at home you are required to conduct adequate workstation risk assessments.
For a homeworking policy and the HSE’s home workstation checklist, visit http://tipsandadvice-personnel.co.uk/download (PS 22.11.05).