The DSE regs and in particular the guidance attached to them (L26) are a joke. They are so far out of date as to be useless, but there are what  we have to work with so hey-ho!

The thing is that the technology can be used for multiple purposes, so you can be reading and writing emails, then creating tomorrow’s presentation, them reviewing some stats  and incorporating them into a report.  You can do this just about anywhere. I set next to some poor bugger this morning on the train and he was half way through a report and was using a tiny laptop with the worlds smallest screen and I wondered how he would be feeling in an hour’s time. This sort of peripatetic work is very difficult to risk assess.  The requirements from Schedule 1 are difficult to apply in this situation as this is based o the assumption that each worker has their own dedicated workspace- no hot desking.

The best that you can do is:

• make sure that people understand that a poor approach to computer work  can lead to long term health issues. If it hurts there is probably something wrong
• make sure that people use the best kit available eg laptops wit decent large enough screens
• the people take breaks and don’t try to do a day’s work in the 2 hour train journey home
• respect that people have time off and not to call them demanding that they knock up a report overnight cos some boss wants it yesterday
• ask them how its going- you can communicate informally or more formally but managers need to make sure that their workers are ok what ever the source of harm, including DSE.