Hi All,

Some advise please on compliance with The Display Screen Equipment Regulations for organisations that have 100's of DSE Users either in large offices or now potentially working from home. Do you have to physically carry out a DSE Risk Assessment on each individual or can you apply some common sense and provide training and then issue the HSE Checklist and then only assess someone that identifies any issues?

Or how do people manage this issue, whilst complying with the regulations

Thanks in anticipation 

I would agree, that with such large numbers there needs to be a bit of common sense.  You need to consider what you want to achieve, for me it is that people are comfortable at their work stations and are not likely to suffer injury from using them.  If you have large numbers it makes sense to do a bit of online training and self certification via questionaires.  

I would just suggest that when you are walking around be vigulant and just look for the odd person who is outside the norm and whose work station looks different from what you would expect to see, then a bit of intervention would be called for.  

For once I would agree that an online package would be a good thing. 

We use an online solution and have dedicated modules for temp homeworking.  I think the next issue will be hot desking.  Not sure how that will pan out.

I'm with Gerry. This is one of the few issues where an off the shelf online solution can work for any organisation that doesn't easily fit to some clearly defined norm of e.g. a widget manufacturer or standard office.

Relatively easy to predict how people's workstations differ, e.g. where they use mulitiple screens and an online solution can cater for such variances.

Agree with the straightforward and practical methods above. HSE states: “The employer is not normally expected to carry out home visits unless there is a special requirement, such as a disability” which is what we do, using specialists where needed.

The worker signs that they have suitable space/domestic arrangements. We use standard DSE assessment for the workstation plus a corporate risk assessment of how we manage home working then a short self-assessment of the home environment by the worker.

Beyond recurring discussion of how you do this, once your system (whatever it is) is up and running it’s a good idea to audit it. Are there many/any incidents, complaints or requests for additional support? There are various packages to create a staff survey, so we did a short, anonymous one and got good response. Then you evaluate against a checklist which is the HSE’s three elements, plus your policy (you do have a policy, don’t you?): DSE/ergonomics, mental health and work environment. If you’re doing the simple things right you will find you comply and have evidence of this.