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Posted By mancman
I know H&S Legislation applies to all employees including homeworkers but i would like a little guidance on how other safety advisers manage this area.
We employ people to take customer calls (routed from a main number) simlar to call centre workers but at their home and update computer data records ie taking orders etc.
We provide a broadband connection and pc.
My main areas of required advice are :
how do we carry out risk assessments and DSE assessments in someones home - do we need to visit EVERY home we use ??
Does the home become the "workplace" and then how we monitor workplace safety ??
Do the workers report all accidents ??
There must be someone out there with similar employees and as much help would be much appreciated.
Thanks
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Posted By J Knight
Hi Mancman,
HASAWA 74 doesn't apply to private homes, however, it does apply to people at work, so one thing to do is to draw tight boundaries around 'at work' so as to exclude 'private homes'. In other words, your RA should concern itself only with the immediate working environment, and not for example the state of the kitchen. You may though need assurances about electrical safety, as there is no point in e.g. testing an appliance for earth integrity if the mains has no earth; circuit breakers may be in order.
Supplied DSE must of course comply with the requirements of Annexe 1 to the Regs. Supplied work equipment should be maintained/inspected as necessary.
We issue our home workers with a self-assessment form, and offer them assistance if they have questions or if issues come up which are related to work. We do not visit private houses unless we are invited for a specific purpose,
John
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Posted By Ali
Use a generic DSE questionnaire that employees can tailor and get them to risk assess themselves with maybe some written guidance from you.
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Posted By Lilian McCartney
Have you seen the HSE guidance on Home working? It's INDG226.
If you go on HSE web and search homeworking you get directed to their.
For practical examples of what people do posts above give same advice I would give.
Hope this helps
Lilian
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Posted By Neil Budworth
Check out technical information on this site. There is detailed guidance on Teleworking.
Best Regards
Neil
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Posted By James Lawrence
This same question was raised by one of my colleague and we came to the same conclusions and guidelines already reiterated above. This is a workplace in isolation as we already understand. Our own queries was how far do we ensure electrical safety and checks? The fixed wiring is not essentially our responsibility.
However, my logic and compliance if we are drawing off a private resource this must be suitable too to ensure acceptable risks factors including upholding our duty of care to everyone potentially affected. We're considering sending our own competent electrician to check this out as part of effective controls in place. Is this going too far? We know electrical hazards are significant and ironically we also know many accidents happen in the home too!!
Thanks in advance James
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Posted By Les Welling
I agree with J Knight above. We have home workers but we go out to their home to access their work area not just for DSE either. It is important to provide a safe place of work even for those working from home. Of course, the home worker can do much to help.
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Posted By Ian P
I only have a few homeworkers to visit but when I do is inspect the working area and any equipment we supply, the rest is residential and the occupiers responssibility. I can just imagine trying to do a fire risk assessment on a private home and the stink that could cause.
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Posted By Anwar Afzal
The main point being missed by some of you is the definition of a workplace under the workplace regs 92, which is a place or part of it which is used to carryout there work, and therefore someone's becomes a home becomes a workplace under these regs.
We go out to our employees homes to carry out a risk assessment, because we supply them with all the equipment and phone line for our intranet etc.
So the answer is yes, unless they are never at home, but travel from home to various sites.
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Posted By Ian P
How do people define a "homeworker"? Somebody who works from home all the time, somebody who is based from their home or somebody who regularly works from home? If the latter what is "reglarly", daily, weekly, monthly? Or does supplying equipment determine whether a person who takes work home is or isn't a homeworker?
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Posted By Anwar Afzal
Homeworker is defined as someone working from home who uses their home as their main office and occassionally goes to the work office to check for any mail etc.
Most of his/her work can be done from home.
Hope this clarifies the last request
Anwar
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Posted By J Knight
Anwar,
Note that para 3 of the guidance to the workplace regs excludes domestic dwellings and goes so far as to state that homeworkers are not included. As far as I know this is how HSE etc will regard homeworkers; what the employer needs to assess and has a duty for is the work, not the workplace, when people are working from home,
John
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Posted By Ian P
Interesting John but should any equipment supplied be assessed as well? I wouldn't go as far as some I have heard of who supply homeworkers with fire fighting equipment but do like to see the condition of the equipment and suitability of the area where it is placed. Perhaps that is more an insurance issue but I would have thought that there is the potential for liability claims for faulty or unsuitable equipment
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Posted By J Knight
Hi Ian,
If equipment is being supplied by the employer that would need to be assessed. We ask our homeworkers to look at the immediate work area, the kit we supply them and its layout, and their working patterns. As I said in an earlier post, we have got some difficulty with the state of people's mains and our duty for it; if we were to ask all our homeworkers to carry out a static installation test that wouldn't be too expensive, but what would we do if the test report recommended a complete re-wire or two?
What we really really have to avoid is anything which impinges on the purely doemstic arrangements a private house-holder makes for themselves (and their family if they have one). For example the state of an employee's kitchen and bathroom is no concern of an employers, whereas in work premises the condition of welfare arrangements is absolutely an employer's duty,
John
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Posted By Ian P
Thanks John
I completely agree with you about the dangers of sticking your H&S nose in to an individuals domestic arrangements and other than going in to the kitchen for a cup of tea, if I'm invited that is, I stick purely to the work area. Luckily I have never come across any homes which I think would require any major work to make them safe as workplaces, if I ever come across a situation as extreme as that I think my only option would be to declare it unfit for purpose and let the internal battles commence.
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Posted By Anwar Afzal
John
I agree in principle to Reg 3 of the workplace regs, but if you have allowed your employee to use his/her home as a place of work and they have then designated a room or area for this purpose and you supply them with the equipment for this use, i think it becomes debateable and i would certainly ensure that we have provided them with a safe work base from which they are working.
We also provide some of our managers with a home as part of their work, and we ask them to use am area of this for their office, and therefore i believe it would not be exempt under reg 3.
Anwar
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Posted By James Lawrence
J knight - can you comment on what you mean of static test? I asked earlier, how far we should go electrically?
I agree with your comments regarding the workplace not to be included with the rest of the domestic dwelling.
I only find this of concern as for example, IT equipment does have certain leakage properties and as such should be highlighted to the home user, including our duty to ensure work's equipment is safe for the purpose and checked peroidically.
How far do we go to check the assessment on the method of electrical connections to equipment, the methods of protection, and an assessment as to the integrity of earthing?
Maybe I've answered my own question, am I already thinking along the correct lines!!
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Posted By John Webster
INDG226 is quite clear on the electrical front
"If homeworkers use electrical equipment
provided by the employer as part of
their work, the employer is responsible
for its maintenance. Employers are only
responsible for the equipment they
supply. Electrical sockets and other parts
of the homeworkers' domestic electrical
system are their own responsibility".
The same guidance is also clear that any risk assessments need only be done for risks that arise as a result of the work activity, and that PUWER only applies to equipment supplied by the employer, not that supplied by the employee etc.
Personally, if I were to inspect a homeworker's workplace I would offer them advice on such things as electrical installation testing, fire precautions etc., but it would be entirely up to them if they took it and acted on it.
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Posted By Stupendous Man
Perhaps this is an area where IOSH could commission some research and produce a guidance booklet?
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Posted By J Knight
Hi James, John,
By static test I mean testing the wiring, static installation is what I should have typed, sorry. And John, I agree entirely with INDG226, but my problem is that plugging a piece of kit into faulty wiring could make any kind of portable appliance test a bit of a waste of time. I don't think for a minute that the employer should ask for assurances of electrical compliance from the home worker, much less assume that responibility themselves, but from a moral point of view it leaves me feeling a bit anxious,
John
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Posted By Bob Thompson CMIOSH
Hi all we have alot of home workers and I agree that for the purposes of sensibility whether or not paragraph 3 applies lets not forget that legal complience is minimum compliance. We have a two pronged assessment process we have an initial visit to assess the suitability of the proposed room or area in terms of its use for work taking a reasonable stance that there are no obviouse problems eg reasonable exit in emergencies etc. we then undertake a dse assessment when the equipment is installed. we in all cases insist on a rcd and at least smoke alarms as standard.
Regards Bob
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Posted By Gilles27
We are only in the early stages of 'approved' home office working - obviously people have been 'working at home' forever in an unregulated manner with the tacit approval of the employer. How I have approached it is the prospective worker completes a 'self risk assessment' form which is unfortunately 8 pages long which the manager countersigns. The form covers egress, electricity, rcds, dse set up, security, smoke detection etc. This then gives us something to assess the case with without visiting each house. We also lend a camera for them to take some photos of their home office. Equipment we give needs PAT testing, so the home-office agreement gives us 'reasonable access' to do tthis as well. Seems to work ok at the moment, although we are only on a pilot still.
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Posted By James Lawrence
John,
Thanks for your response and clarifying the static test. Indeed the Guidance 226 is clear and controls straight forward on many points. I share your moral sentiments and you understood my concerns.
The fixed wiring is the homeowners responsibility and certainly we can ensure rcd's to protect employer's equipment and minimise the risks to the homeworker premises and those potentially affected. I'm just uncomfortable with leavinng it on a assumption that the homeworker's wiring is suitable and they will not always understand all the technical issues surrounding this.
It not about who this is feasible for, but surely our duty of care. This is a workplace and we are happy for them to work from home and I do believe we should take appropriate steps to ensure simple static installation tests. Problem is this is where the boundaries are crossed and I feel the should employer pay for this. If the fixed wiring then is not suitable for the purpose, the homeowner can't have the equipment and at least then our duty of care is absolved to rest easy.
After that, it the employee choice and rest in their domain. I don't want to go down the road updating the wiring to spec as this is not the topic of this chat. Just want to clear how far we should go down and feel that the guidance toward our duty of care is open to questions.
Yes, that what we are here for and ensure reasonable precedents. I would say most cases the risk is low and this type of risk aversion should be simple, accept for the time, politics and cost involved and whom it concern!
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