If your team is working remotely in some capacity, remember you most likely still have a responsibility to provide a safe workplace. Obviously this is somewhat difficult when employees are working from home! A good solution is to conduct a Health & Safety Audit for your remote or telecommuting employees. This is essentially a checklist that should help identify any hazards or potential dangers that may put the health or safety of your employees at risk.
Ideally, you would conduct this audit at the point or employment or when an employee changes from working in the office, to telecommuting. However, for many companies, the sudden arrival of COVID made this impossible. Many of us now find ourselves with employees working from home and no idea on their setup or whether their environment is suitable.
If you identify health and safety issues with a particular employee’s setup, work with them to understand what would resolve the issue. Often it could be as simple as approval to purchase a new desk chair, a new monitor, or an arrangement to work different hours (eg to work around family demands).
In addition to using a Health & Safety Audit for a Remote or Telecommuting Workplace, you should also keep the following items in mind;
- Encourage employees to take regular breaks away from their computers
- Discourage working during evenings and on weekends
- Recognize that online meeting fatigue is a real problem and lead team members to construct their days so that they are not in meetings for long periods at once
- Encourage social / non-work-related communication between team members (in the office, this happens naturally but it needs to be fostered when everyone is remote)
- Encourage healthy personal habits including regular physical activity, good sleep patterns, a healthy diet, connections with family and friends, etc
Free Download: Health & Safety Audit for Remote and Telecommuting Employees
To make it easy to conduct a health and safety audit for employees working from home, we’ve prepared here a template you can take and start using today. Print out the PDF or download the Word version to edit to suit the needs of your organization.
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Health & Safety Audit for Remote and Telecommuting EmployeesA 4 page checklist to assess any health and safety risks associated with your employees’ remote / telecommuting working environment |