The COVID-19 pandemic changed office-based work forever. Lockdowns led to a rise in remote working. This new way of working promised benefits but also brought new risks. Remote staff often lack proper home workspace assessments, leading to potential health and security issues.
Sarah Holmes, Online Training Product Manager at British Assessment Bureau has written this article to help you understand these risks and what you can do to overcome them.
Ergonomics: Hardware and furniture
Working from home can cause Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs), particularly in the neck due to poor ergonomics. This can lead to stiff necks, sprains, strains, carpal tunnel syndrome, and repetitive strain injuries.
Proper risk assessment and ergonomic guidance, including new equipment, are crucial to prevent such issues and ensure employee health and safety.
Chairs
Chairs can cause problems when working from home because most people don’t have a chair that’s designed for sitting at a desk, so they use sofas, dining room chairs, or stools. This results in bad posture and or strain and a lack of appropriate support, resulting in MSDs.
Your chair should support the lower back as lower back pain can become a problem.
A sofa is comfortable, but they’re not designed for sitting upright and working in. The risk is that people think they’re comfortable, but over long periods they are not as your spine is not in a neutral position.
Desks
Many people work from a dining room table, kitchen table or desk of some sort, which is fine, as long as the chair and sitting position is appropriate. The problems start when people use their lap, coffee table, breakfast bar, or other surfaces that create a bad posture, which encourage poor neck and back support.
Some people will just sit in bed and work. That’s not a good position because you’re hunched over, which can influence the development of the widow’s hump at the top of your neck. Working from a bed for a short period of time might be fine, but not for the entire day.
Importantly, these things always depend on the individual. It can be difficult for some people to set up a healthy home workstation, but that’s why it’s so important for employers to give their employees guidelines as to what good looks like.
Ergonomics: Technology
Laptops
Improper home laptop use poses lots of risks. A laptop generally has a much smaller screen than a desktop monitor so you might be squinting, leaning forwards, or leaning backwards depending on your eyesight.
Bad posture and eye strain can result in headaches. A good warning sign that something’s wrong.
Screens
Many people have screens at home, which is a step in the right direction, but there are still risks. You need your monitor at eye level so your head is in a neutral position – you’re not looking up or down. It might need to be on a riser.
Keyboard
Poor keyboard use can result in repetitive strain injury (RSI). The most common behaviour is that people rest their wrists on the edge of the desk and type. You should keep your wrist in line with your elbow and type with your hands – there shouldn’t be any weight going through your hands. This is why a keyboard rest is often valuable, to take the weight of the arm.
Mouse
Laptop trackpads are useful but harder to use than a mouse, however, even the wheel on a mouse can cause RSI. There are various solutions to fit people, including the trackball and the vertical mouse, which have many ergonomic advantages.
Mouse mat
Similar to the wrist support when typing, if your wrist isn’t supported when you’re using the mouse, you’re at risk of RSI.
Behaviours
Hardware poses many risks, but they’re not the only risks to employee health, happiness and productivity.
Even if home workers have perfectly ergonomic workstations, their habits and behaviours may still endanger their mental and physical health. This can range from the risk of burnout due to working longer hours – checking emails into the evening – to physical risks of not moving often enough.
Breaks
It’s important to take screen breaks because the risk of eye and neck strains and headaches due to a lack of movement increases.
Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) can be a concern for certain people. Movement and hydration can decrease the risk of DVT.
Activity
Linked to the last point, it’s all too easy to fall into a very sedentary work life. When working from home, we’re not commuting, or walking around, and we’re not walking as far to the kitchen or toilet. You think, ‘I’ll get up and move around in a moment’, but then you just open one more email or do one more task and suddenly an hour has gone by.
This poses a big risk to physical health as we’re not stretching or moving, and not getting the blood and oxygen flowing – the latter point also affects concentration and productivity. Physical activity is an important part of maintaining good mental health as well.
Absenteeism, presenteeism and productivity
One obvious risk of remote working is that people aren’t working, or not working their hours. This is always the fear of business owners and the lockdown proved that, on the whole, people do work their hours.
However, it remains a risk, not least because it involves dishonesty, so can be hard to detect through normal check-ins.
The question should be: why are they behaving like that? Have they not got enough work? Is the work not stimulating? Are they in the wrong role?
Environment
Another area of risk is the wider environment. This is much less explored but poses many risks to health and productivity.
Light
Good lighting is important because poor lighting can result in eye strain and headaches. For example, if your screen is bright but your room is dark, or your room is dark except for a big bright window. That difference can cause eye strain and even blurred vision because your eyes are having to work harder to focus.
Temperature
One risk can be that if people have the temperature too high, they can become lethargic and make mistakes or find it hard to concentrate. Of course, if you have it very warm, you might suffer from dehydration and fatigue.
If you have it too cold, the blood flow doesn’t get to the fingers and so you lose feeling in your fingers and aren’t as productive, or get frustrated or make more mistakes.
Air quality
Fresh air is important. When it’s cold, people close the windows, and in modern houses, there is little ventilation. This can mean a light build-up of C02 which can affect concentration, make people sleepy and dull the senses.
Noise
Some office noise can be distracting and many people enjoy the quiet of home. However, a manager may not know the risks of loud noises or noise-based distractions in someone’s home. Are they near an airport, noisy road, or police station? Do people share homes with partners or children? Is that noise stressful and distracting? These are all risks to productivity and stress based solely on noise.
Mental Health
The risks to mental health are a key part of home-working risk assessment, not least because the symptoms can be hard to detect and remain a hard topic to discuss for many.
Many people dislike busy offices with the pressure of social interaction – often inducing feelings of anxiety. Many of them therefore loved lockdown.
However, many of the extroverts, those who thrive on – often needing – in-person interactions struggled to adjust, suffering from social isolation and the mental health impacts of that.
For those who need in-person interaction or even just company, if you’re working remotely you may have limited options. From a manager’s perspective, you need to encourage people to talk, check in with your team regularly, use video conferencing, and facilitate the social side of workplaces. Just chat. Even arrange in-person meetings when appropriate.
For those who prefer working from home, alone, it can push them further into social isolation. This can then exacerbate existing feelings of anxiety and even depression. Again, managers should communicate regularly and frequently with their teams to see how they’re doing.
Burnout
Burnout is a real risk for home workers. Many fail to compartmentalise work and home life and continue to work all hours – or at least feel that they’re at work all hours of the day. Watch out for employees who have work email on their personal phones.
Stress
Another mental health risk is stress. When you’re in the office things like IT, finance and HR – even just your colleagues – are right there. It can be stressful to feel unsupported, as people can perceive they are without access to these people and services. This can be made worse by the fact that people don’t like to ‘make a fuss’ about something they think is small.
Data Security
Home working poses significant data security risks. These include unauthorised access to work laptops and sensitive software, unsecured public Wi-Fi usage, potential exposure of sensitive information in public or shared spaces, and the risk of printed documents being left unattended.
These risks not only impact employers but also customers and the supply chain. Additionally, there is an increased risk of cybercrime due to unsecured Wi-Fi, personal laptop usage, tethering with personal phones, and limited IT support.
Conclusion
Remote working and risk assessment is interconnected, with physical and mental aspects influencing each other. Even if one aspect, such as the desk, is suitable, other factors like the chair or improper use of the screen can pose risks. It is crucial for managers to regularly assess their teams’ setup, ensuring they have the appropriate equipment, routine, and support for their well-being, satisfaction, and productivity in their role.
Remote risk assessments and ISO 45001 are crucial for ensuring workplace well-being and safety, especially in remote work. Assessments help identify hazards and risks, allowing organisations to implement necessary controls and measures. ISO 45001 provides a framework for effective health and safety practices, prioritising employee welfare and promoting a productive and secure remote work environment.
