Posted By Steve B I used to work for a large soft drinks manufacturer, the sales force where all home based. As you can imagine one to one DSE assessments was not a viable option, the company gave each home based sales representative a chair that met all the DSE requirements and a basic desk after all the same duty of care applies to home workers as it does to office based personnel. we then had them complete a DSE self assessment and only followed up with a personal visit if the self assessment raised any problems. initially they were given money to buy the basic office furniture, but as you can imagine people left to their own devices............ hope this helps regards Steve B

Posted By Daniel Stonehouse Thankou all very much for your replies, sometimes big sister knows best and sometimes she doesn't: in this case she doesn't but i can now show her these replies and hopefully she will understand what i have been attempting to say for months now!

Posted By MICK MEAD, CMIOSH Consider not restricting the self-assessment to DSE issues. I have seen cases where the employer also (following the provision of information to homeworkers) include questions on electrical safety, manual handling, security and driving. Just an idea? Mick

Posted By Kieran J Duignan Daniel When you write 'they can't possibly do risk assessments on them....', are you or she declaring that it is not 'reasonably practicable' to control the risks? If she is deciding that she wishes to take the commercial risk of violating employee rights to a safe and healthy working environment, a smile may be a constructive alternative to pulling your hair out. Another constructive alternative is to enourage her to pay a chartered safety and health practitioner to drive around to the sites and carry out a risk assessment with recommendations for how all relevant risks to employee safety and health can be managed within a defined budget.

Posted By R. C. Hodson Just by reading these posts the situation seems to be escalating somewhat. Never say that you cannot assess your employees (or your friends employees) safety because you would be crucified in court should the worse happen. I strongly suggest getting in touch with a consultant. Just a thought. Ryan.

Posted By Daniel Stonehouse Dear all, for those that read or responded to this thread last week, just an update for you all. After the initial rewriting of the H and S policy to make it more compatible with HSE guidance, the MD asked: "so, if the H and S policy (which he had just agreed to, with several alterations)says we will carry out risk assessments, does that mean we have to do them?" Several hours later the phrase "so we assessed the risks to our workers several months ago, put in place control strategies and are doing a pretty good job of controlling the risks, but just never documented them?" Was uttered. what a change from the "we can't possibly do that!" attitude a few days before. I spent some time explaining the RA process, went through the control measures already in place and left the HSE 'five steps' documents and such like for the Director to read and to be honest could not find much to improve upon. Yesterday i recieved a draft copy of their risk assessments (not yet carried out), and they look pretty good! In addition they are going to include H and S topics in their monthly face to face meetings, and give information to all of their workers on issues such as housekeeping, DSE, manual handling, stress and fire safety. Even better they went and spent some money on several safety related items that they were aware of but were kind of putting of buying until their purchase could be truly justified. All in all, considering the way things could have turned out, a moderate success!

Posted By Glyn Atkinson Sorry, another thought that has sprung to mind - who certifies (PAT tests) the electrical appliances and fixed electrical installations at home workers' premises? Is any form of home risk assessment done in their working environment? Do they have form of fire protection equipment in designated home offices? Etc, etc. !!! Sounds like too much reliance on others rather than being in control from head office !!

Posted By Daniel Stonehouse Glynn, the answer to your response is that yes, they have looked at the working environment, put into place reasonable measures to mitigate known significant hazards (to an extent) but unfortunately not in a systematic way - and neither have they documented this. Due to restructuring the staff numbers have gone from 21 to 11. The main hazards and risks that i identified had already been recognised by the entire management team (both of them) and all homeworkers ( all nine of them), were aware of the actions to be taken to avoid, reduce or control them. Lone working, personal protection safety and stress guidance was already issued, only it was not documented in a very clear way. Some points to come out of the process were - 1. Electrical testing by a competent third party annually 2. Smoke alarms, once use fire extinguishers (instructions on the side) and basic first aid kits supplied to all. 3.In addition as already stated a series of H and S topics covered each month. 4. There will be much greater emphasis put on H and S 5. Once the findings of the risk assessments are known then further improvements will be made. With a total staff of eleven, i had to be realistic with what i could hope to achieve in two days. As for publc liability insurance etc. i did not feel competent to give advice there and it was not mentioned. I could have tried to baffle them with the regulations, frighten with the possible financial and legal penalties, show how much H and S could save their company, or just try to show them that they had done most of it any way, so a little more would not hurt - ( obviously a little more than that in real life) - the first two would have resulted in a return of the "we cant / we won't" circle the wagons mentality, the third would be very difficult to identify in this case, so the fourth option was in my opinion the best way. As i say, it isn't perfect but it is a start and shows that they are going to be doing what many would regard as'reasonably practicable'in the circumstances. It may well be that the actions they are carrying out are not adequate, and i do have some reservations, but then nothing is ever perfect - my place of work included and i believe other places are the same (except for Mark S Mark's place of work of course) - but sometimes we have to be realistic and do the best we can - the only reason any action has been carried out at all was because of my relationship with management, so i was a little constrained, so to speak. As always, thankyou for your input.