The Safety of Work Ep. 114 How do we manage safety for work from home workers?
Lastly, we delve into the role of leadership in addressing psychosocial hazards, the importance of standardized guidance for remote work, and the challenges faced by line managers in managing remote workers. We wrap up the episode by providing a toolkit for managers to effectively navigate the challenges of remote work, and highlight the need for tailored safety strategies for different work arrangements.
Discussion Points:
- Different work-from-home arrangements
- Safety needs of work from home
- Challenges of remote worker representation
- Understanding and managing psychosocial risks
- Leadership and managing technical risks
- Remote work challenges and physical presence
- Practical takeaways and general discussion
- Safety strategies for different work arrangements
- The answer to our episode’s question – the short answer is that there definitely isn't a short answer. But this paper comes from a larger project and I know that the people who did the work have gathered together a list of existing resources and toolboxes and, they've even created a few prototype tools and training packages
Quotes:
"There's a risk that we're missing important contributions from workers with different needs, neurodiverse workers, workers with mental health issues, workers with particular reasons for working at home and we’re not going to be able to comment on the framework and how it might affect them." - Drew
“When organizations' number of incident reports go up and up and up and we struggle to understand, is that a sign of worsening safety or is that a sign of better reporting?” - David
“They do highlight just how inconsistent organisations approaches are and perhaps the need for just some sort of standardised guidance on what is an organisation responsible for when you ask to work from home, or when they ask you to work from home.” - Drew
“I think a lot of people's response to work from home is let's try to subtly discourage it because we're uncomfortable with it, at the same time as we recognise that it's probably inevitable.” - Drew
Resources: