Rank: New forum user 
|
Hi there I'm looking for some advice please on homeworking. We have a number of employees who work from home, and at the time their systems are set up a physical risk assessment is carried out with regard to health and safety and we maintain the records for this. In our home working contract we state that we will carry out an annual assessment for health and safety and I wondered if you could confirm if we could do this without physically visiting the homes? (This would just be for the annual review, for any new homeworkers we would always carry out a physical assessment); We would like to send a form to our homeworkers and ask them the following: 1. Has anything in within your working environment changed since we last carried out the health and safety assessment? If the employee answers yes we would always go and visit them to carry out an assessment. If the employee answers no we would ask: 2. Would you like us to visit your premises to carry out a health and safety assessment If the employee answers no we would ask them to sign the form to confirm there have been no changes to their working environment since our last visit and that they do not require the annual assessment. If they answer yes we would go and visit them and carry out the review. If you have advice on this it would be most welcome. Many thanks in advance! Suzanne
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Super forum user 
|
What sort of work are they doing? Office-type work or something else?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: New forum user
|
Hi there - yes its office based work, mainly telephone and computer based work.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Super forum user 
|
Your review needs to consider the tasks and the individual, not just the environment.
In order to participate effectively in any review, the employee will need sight of the previous assessment and any previous declaration.
For teleworking, it would be worthwhile considering the design of any self-assessment (I'm thinking DSE here) to ensure there is every opportunity to capture new or changing health-related issues. Yes, it's only office work, but (contrary to what Lord Young would have us believe) there are some serious musculoskeletal issues which may develop over time, and which your employees may not be sufficiently aware of.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Super forum user
|
Have a look at the IOSH publication - Out of 'site' out of mind? Managing office teleworking in the 21st Century and the associated resources. You may find them useful and informative. The document can be found via the following link....Hope this helps. http://www.iosh.co.uk/in.../guidance_and_tools.aspx
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
The 'advice' I can offer, based on the very limited information available, is to quantify financially the risks involved.
The foreseeability of a claim for musculoskeletal injury is reasonably high to moderately high, depending on the tasks involved, the age range of the workers and their vulnerability to such injury (which can be quantitaviely assessed relabily and validly). You can also research the value of a successful claim, from figures available on court awards or your own research on out-of-court settlements; the highest negotiated settlement I have observed as an expert witness (safety ergonomist) was over £100k.
The foreseeability of costs for lost time due to musculoskeletal pin is also reasonably high to moderately high, depending on the tasks involved, the age range of the workers and their vulnerability to such injury (which can be quantitaviely assessed relabily and validly).
The proposed risk assessments you refer to will cost £x. To the extent that your proposed scheme is adequate provision for likely costs of the foreseeable claims and costs for lost time, it's fine.
To the extent that it is not you can either decide to accept the risk as part of your job or advise management that they need to either invest to improve appropirate screening, briefings, training and monitoring or to be prepared to lose money in litigation and plan for higher insurance premiums as well as loss of staff and impaired reputation as an employer
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Super forum user 
|
Suzanne in my opinion there are a few low level risks to consider for homeworkers, and the risk of injury is very low. What you are currently doing regarding risk assessments for these people seems reasonable ie an initial assessment and annual review involving the worker. Assuming that the initial risk assessment covers the significant risks and that the worker receives appropriate information and instruction. But I feel that there would be business benefits if more frequent visits were made to discuss a whole range of business / work issues as well as Health & Safety. Heres some good info to share with your workers http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg226.pdfSteve
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
While the HSE document on homeworking is excellent as far as it goes, it has not been updated since The Equality Act 2010 came into force.
As a result, managing risks of homeworking now calls for thorough attention to the evidence of risks of musculo-skeletal disorders associated with aging. Savvy lawyers are well aware that awards for unfair discrimiantion are many times the awards for safety and increasingly frame dsiability and age discrimiantion claims about what are also personal injuries.
What you therefore are faced with is estimating the conditional probability of injury associated with differences in age. You can choose whether or not to use the available research before or after a claim.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: New forum user
|
Many thanks for the responses. The guidance on homeworking and assessments is a little grey, my concern is that whilst we visit our homeworkers to carry out the initial assessment and we also take photographic evidence, how long is it before we need to actually re-visit the homeworkers in their home working environment? The homeworkers come into our main office on a fairly regular basis so we are able to hold face to face meetings with them to cover off any other issues. What concerns me most is if we did decide to send a document to all our homeworkers and only carry out assessements on anyone who has had changes to or within their premises or anyone who indicated that they wanted a re-evaluation assessment, is how do they know if there is anything wrong with their environment if they are not aware of all things health and safety and does this leave us in a vunerable position? Thanks very much. Suzanne
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Super forum user
|
Ask your people to send in a few pictures taken with digital camera or mobile phone? That may provide enough to enable a competent assessor to re-evaluate the physical work environment issues. See also my comments re task and individual health issues.
Home visits are time consuming and expensive and intrusive. Avoid this altogether if you can.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
In relation to the question 'how do they know if there is anything wrong with their environment if they are not aware of all things health and safety and does this leave us in a vunerable position?', there are two parts:
a. they can make an informed judgement about 'anything wrong with their environment' to the extent that your company provides the necesary training, information, guidance and supervision, like any other workers;
b. you are in a 'vulnerable position' to the extent that you fail to provide them with necesary training, information, guidance and supervision, in view of the enormous amount of relevant published material you can avail of.
|
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum.
You cannot reply to topics in this forum.
You cannot delete your posts in this forum.
You cannot edit your posts in this forum.
You cannot create polls in this forum.
You cannot vote in polls in this forum.