Agile/Home working

This page aims to offer guidance around the actions that should be taken while you are working at home. This will help create a safe working environment reflective of the expectations associated with the Health and Safety at Work Act and associated legislation.

It is important to understand what is meant by “Homeworking”. It consists of working at home rather than at a council workplace. It is likely that this work will involve using electronic systems/computers to accomplish expected tasks. Homeworking will involve a formalised arrangement to work at home and ad-hoc periods of working at home would not normally be considered as homeworking.

“Agile working” is a flexible way of working that can involve working in multiple places to include your identified workbase, home, other council workplaces or other non-council establishments. It will not normally involve formalised periods of homeworking, although working at home may be part of the “agile mix”.

Managers continue to have a responsibility for the health, safety and welfare of their teams whilst they are working at home and so they will have a responsibility to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that:

• necessary risk assessments have been undertaken to address significant risks
• appropriate risk control measures have been implemented
• necessary information, instruction, training and supervision is being provided
• compliance with agreed controls is being maintained
• they keep in touch with those working at home to help ensure they have appropriate wellbeing support and can seek clarity around their role.

A number of documents provide specific advice on the matter to include “GD3 – Creating a Remote Workstation” and “GD18 - Agile Working - Guidance”

Employees who are homeworking have to take reasonable care at home and have the following responsibilities:

• undertake necessary actions to help assess the risk
• complete necessary training before undertaking any task
• undertake tasks in accordance with any training and instruction provided
• report any health and safety concerns to their line manager immediately

Accidents at home

Health and safety management systems must include mechanisms to report and record accidents in the workplace. It will sometimes be difficult to determine if accidents in the home will be reportable to an employer but if there is any doubt about the relevance of an accident to a work activity then advice can be sought from the Health and Safety team. As an example, circumstances that see an employee receive an electric shock from the power lead of a council computer would be reportable to the Health and Safety team, whereas tripping over a child’s toy would generally not be reportable to the council.

The links below provide detailed information about the various risk assessments that may be relevant to working from home such as Display Screen Equipment, First Aid and Accident Reporting.

Downloads and supporting documents:

GD18 - Agile Working - guidance

Risk assessments

GD3 – Creating a remote workstation

Remote working checklist

Working from home health and safety risk check document - eTemplate

At home DSE risk check form - eTemplate

If you require any additional information, please contact the Health and Safety Team on 01698 454733 or email HSaccident_reporting@southlanarkshire.gov.uk.