Given the increased prevalence of remote and hybrid workers in the UK workforce, it’s important to make sure you know how to conduct a risk assessment for remote workers. Your usual health and safety duties extend to homeworkers and include identifying and reducing risks, ensuring workstation assessments are carried out, and providing appropriate training.
Whilst most home working is usually office-type work which means it is a lower risk from a health and safety perspective, issues such as stress, fatigue and poor posture can pose real dangers to homeworkers.
Check out our Remote working and cybersecurity toolkit for a range of policies and templates you can use to deal with remote staff, including a risk assessment for remote workers.
Risk assessments for remote workers
Your duty to conduct a risk assessment for remote workers and hybrid workers
Your legal obligation to carry out risk assessments for the safety of your staff extends to those who work from home. The process of carrying out your risk assessment will probably be different (eg it will not usually be appropriate to visit an employee’s home, so you may need to ask them to carry out the assessment themselves and/or send you a picture of their workspace). You can use General risk assessment for remote workers to help you.
Once your staff member’s home workplace is passed as safe, it will be their responsibility to keep it that way. However, you must ensure that the risk assessment is reviewed periodically, or whenever you have reason to believe that the risks may have changed (eg if your staff member has started working with a new piece of equipment, or their role has changed to involve much longer periods of screen time).
How to conduct a risk assessment for remote workers
You can use General risk assessment for remote workers to help perform your risk assessment and should follow the five-step process outlined in Risk assessments for business premises (which includes identifying the hazards and who might be harmed, taking reasonable steps to eliminate or reduce the risks, recording your findings, and reviewing and updating your risk assessment regularly).
Be aware that, depending on where your staff are working, it could be difficult in practice for you to conduct a thorough risk assessment, eg if your staff travel to a lot of different locations. You may need to train your staff to carry out their own risk assessments.
Hazards to look for when carrying out a risk assessment for staff who work from home
There are some risks that you should specifically consider for most staff working remotely. Common risks include:
- risks to the mental health of your staff such as stress and anxiety;
- risks associated with workstations, for example the use of display screen equipment (DSE);
- electrical equipment of any sort (see Electrical testing for how staff can reduce the risks related to electrical equipment);
- environmental issues such as ventilation, temperature or noise levels;
- lone working, which can both increase the risk of physical harm and pose a threat to mental health (see Risks to lone workers and homeworkers for guidance on how to deal with risks to lone workers); and
- driving for work and travelling abroad (see Driving and overseas travel for work for further guidance on how to reduce such risks).
This list is not exhaustive – you must keep an open mind to any risks specific to the particular work your staff are doing remotely.
If you use our Working from home policy, it says that staff members who work from home must refer to the business’s health and safety policy, and take reasonable care of their own health and safety while working from home. It also requires staff members to undertake health and safety risk assessments of their home, and provides that the business may refuse a request to work from home if health and safety concerns are not addressed.
Protecting mental and physical health
Protecting the mental health of homeworkers
The following steps can help you reduce stress and mental health issues for staff who work remotely:
- ensure remote workers come in regularly where possible so they can stay up to date with the business and keep in touch with other staff;
- remember to include them in work socials to tackle feelings of isolation;
- provide helplines for IT support or equipment breakdown;
- set up proper systems to keep in contact with off-premises staff during the day (eg phone, email, instant messaging, video-conferencing, online discussion forums) and check in with them regularly; and
- have informal discussions with staff to assess their mood and talk through how they approach their tasks.
Where staff members take unacceptable levels of sickness absence due to work-related stress, you may need to consider taking action to address the issue. Bear in mind that you also have an obligation to take reasonable steps to ensure that homeworkers are not working excessively long hours and that they are taking suitable breaks; see our Q&A for further guidance.
Requiring homeworkers to conduct workstation assessments
Homeworkers should carry out a workstation self-assessment and give you the results, regardless of whether or not you provided their workstation equipment.
Look out for staff using a laptop at the kitchen table without enough space, a proper desk, supportive chair or the correct set-up of display equipment. This can cause back problems, eye problems and musculoskeletal disorders. You can find guidance on how to set up a workstation properly at Comfortable working environment.
Training and insurance for homeworkers
Health and safety training for homeworkers
You must give enough health and safety training to all your staff to enable them to be safe at work, including those who work from home.
For homeworkers, training can usually be light-touch. For example, if they mostly work at a computer, making sure they are aware of the importance of taking rest breaks, resting their eyes and having a proper workstation set-up is likely to be sufficient.
Insurance cover for staff who work from home
Your employers’ liability insurance probably already extends to homeworkers as it is standard policy to do so but you should check the wording of your policy to confirm this.
Additionally, make sure that any business equipment in your homeworker’s home (ie equipment that you have supplied) is covered by your insurance policy to be taken off your premises.
Our Working from home policy assumes that your insurance policy extends to staff members who work from home, and that it will cover equipment provided by your business that is used by homeworkers. It makes it clear that staff are responsible for insuring their own personal equipment used for work, and obtaining any relevant permissions to work from home.
If you are running your own business from home, check that your existing home insurance covers you for this, and check whether you need any additional insurances or permits. See Running a business from home for guidance.
The content in this article is up to date at the date of publishing. The information provided is intended only for information purposes, and is not for the purpose of providing legal advice. Sparqa Legal’s Terms of Use apply.
Marion joined Sparqa Legal as a Senior Legal Editor in 2018. She previously worked as a corporate/commercial lawyer for five years at one of New Zealand’s leading law firms, Kensington Swan (now Dentons Kensington Swan), and as an in-house legal consultant for a UK tech company. Marion regularly writes for Sparqa’s blog, contributing across its commercial, IP and health and safety law content.