As I sit here this morning in my local library watching my six-year-old play board games with my wife, I’m reminded of what it was like working from home in New Zealand’s level 4 lockdown. Surprisingly, the pain points I envisioned; a four-year-old and six-year-old charging around the house during my Zoom calls, TV blaring, and countless other distractions, were effectively managed thanks to my wife and I tag-teaming our calls and ensuring a separate area away from the hustle and bustle of toddler land.
Despite this, the unforeseen risks associated with working from home proved much more problematic to deal with during level 4 lockdown. An example was my office setup.
For years we had been using the same chairs at the dining table with no issue. However, when sitting in these chairs for an extended period, it became quite evident that they were not up to the task at hand, with the supporting webbing giving out after a week and the lack of back support leading me to a round of physio after lockdown!
The SAFE365 Solution?
As the UK goes into another hard lockdown, SAFE365 has extended its 6-month free subscription service for UK businesses. Including SAFE365’s inbuilt checklist solution and access to the COVID Working from Home Setup Checklist. Having your workers undertake this checklist going into lockdown will prompt users to thoroughly investigate their proposed working from home solution to ensure that it will be robust and fit for purpose during the lockdown.
The SAFE365 tool and smart device based app are possibly the easiest methods of ensuring that business continues to meet their health and safety obligations. It’s easy to forget with an empty office that business risk has not so much decreased due to a lack of staff in the office, but now with a distributed workforce in a domestic environment, the risk profile has changed, and this is where the SAFE365 solution can shine for our friends in the UK.
Risk Assessment made simple.
Essentially the checklist is a very simple risk assessment, but the key here is that it is;
These three points are key to ensure engagement with your workforce, showing the value in an otherwise mundane process. The result is increased levels of risk mitigation for both the worker and the business, and ensuring “overtime” injuries are, to some extent, reduced.
Can we help?
Downloading our free 6-month subscription and app is as easy as popping over to www.safe365global.com/uk/pricing and following the links. As always, our UK based support team is always ready to help and can also be contacted at andy.hutt@safe365global.com.
Safe365 works with businesses to achieve occupational health and safety success. Read more about our work here.
Self-assess, diagnose and develop a health and safety compliance action plan with Safe365.