Looking after employee health, safety, and wellbeing on returning to the workplace
07/15/2021
As Covid restrictions ease, organisations are preparing to open their premises and return employees back to their normal places of work and resuming services provided.
Employers have a duty of care to ensure the workplace is sufficiently safe to return to and that the latest Government guidance is followed.
Risk Assessment and Safe Working Procedures
A key part of the decision-making process to return staff to conventional workplaces and resume service provisions (or provide new working environments or services) involves the assessment and management of risks.
Organisations must do all they can to keep up with the rapidly changing environment and guidance issued, and review (or complete) workplace risk assessments accordingly.
You can see more detail about completing risk assessments in our How to do a risk assessment for your not-for-profit article.
Agile Working
Recent surveys suggest that over half of workers would like to retain a mix of working at home and at their workplace, and three quarters expect employers to offer it. If this is the case for your organisation, you should be formally planning your approach or policy toward hybrid, or ‘agile’ working.
Agile working may involve employees not only working in isolation, but potentially also undertaking visits to sites away from their normal workplace. Employers have a responsibility to assess the potential risks associated with the type of lone working activities that are to be undertaken and to implement suitable precautions to keep lone workers safe.
The guide offers a list of controls that can be implemented to help keep lone workers safe.
Office work from home
With regards to office work from home, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has stressed that “Employers have the same health and safety responsibilities for employees working from home as for any other employees.”
In addition to the training provided for Display Screen Equipment (DSE) work in the office, employers should provide workers with appropriate advice on completing their own basic workstation assessment at home - a practical workstation checklist is available from the HSE. The checklist covers the workstation and the working environment.
Workers should also be made aware of other simple steps that they need to take to reduce the risks from DSE work
Organisations that make the decision to make people permanent home workers will need to comply fully with the requirements of the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations, including formal workstation assessments.
If employees do return to an office at their previous workplace, their employers should consider revisiting the original DSE assessment. They may not be working at their usual desk, and the office may have changed layout, so staff should be reminded to set up their new workstation to suit their personal profile and a formal risk assessment should then be completed.
Wellbeing and mental health
The risks to people’s health from the pandemic are psychological as well as physical. These include anxiety about the ongoing health crisis and fear of infection, as well social isolation due to the lockdown. Many will have experienced illness and bereavement in addition to challenging domestic situations and financial worries. Some members of staff may have concerns about travelling and socially distancing on public transport, etc.
Employers have a legal duty to protect employees from stress at work by doing a risk assessment and acting on it. Employers may find the HSE's Management Standards helpful. The standards help identify and manage six areas of work design which can affect stress levels – demands, control, support, relationships, role and change.
Zurich has also launched a new digital tool that allows UK corporations to educate, identify and manage the mental health risks associated with their workforce. The Zurich Risk Advisor (ZRA) app is a digital risk assessment tool that will empower organisations to understand their mental health exposures and then provide recommendations and insights linked to industry benchmarks.
The app tests different scenarios through a series of question sets so organisations can identify and be equipped to mitigate and therefore prevent their mental health risks in a variety of scenarios and events. It is free to download and aligns with Zurich’s recent offering of five free counselling sessions for Zurich policy holders who may consider seeking support following a claim.
