WORKING FROM HOME - EMPLOYER TIPS

If you are a small business owner, or a manager with a team working from home, you should:

• Ensure employees are aware of resources to support their mental health and wellbeing.

• Be aware that individual circumstances vary and consider options to support each team member’s needs.

• Provide strong IT support and guidelines for remote working so employees can be fully productive.

• Be mindful of the disruption that potential school closures may cause to families.

• Agree on working hours that employees know they are not expected to work beyond.

• Touch base with each team member daily and have regular longer one-to-one meetings.

• Remind employees to work in ways that are kind to their mind and body.

• Maintain regular virtual team meetings.

• Advise teams to stay as connected as possible.

• Remember that being a manager doesn’t make you immune to the same stresses as your employees and that you need to look after yourself too.

• Document an agreement that work can be successfully completed from home.

• Establish realistic and clear instructions and allocation of workloads, roles, and tasks to be performed from home, and their associated timelines.

• Check in regularly with staff to ensure they can access the systems and technology required to do their job.

• Establish and maintain communication channels for keeping employees informed of organisational and work team activities, updates, training, and opportunities.

OPTIONAL COVER LETTER

As working from home becomes the new norm, we, as a business, and our workers (employees and contractors, full time and part time) are rapidly adapting to these changes in work arrangements. However, this does not alter our mutual obligations under the model WHS laws, whereby each employer has a legal duty of care for the health and safety of their workers, and others, and to ensure risks in all their workplaces are prevented or minimised. Equally, workers also have obligations to minimise workplace health and safety risks, including when working from home.

As you can imagine, meeting our employer obligations can be an onerous task when we have minimal control of your work from home environment.

To assist us assess the risks associated with your working from home arrangement (either as a temporary measure or on a permanent basis), we ask that you complete this ‘Working from Home - Compliance Self Assessment’. In the event that the assessment highlights any issues, you will be contacted by your manger to discuss ways and means to remediate (alleviate, eliminate or reduce) any hazards or risks identified with your ongoing working from home arrangements, so far is reasonably practicable.

So please now answer all questions in the self-assessment honestly and accurately, and with as much detail as possible, including providing supporting photographs (with this form or via a separate email) where requested. Failure to complete this assessment, or providing incomplete and/or false information, may compromise your workplace health and safety environment and obligations, and or lead to possible disciplinary action. Additionally, you must advise us if your working from home environment changes such that this may increase risk to your workplace health and safety. Otherwise this assessment is valid for 12 months from submission.

Should you have any questions about the assessment specifically, or your health and safety generally, please contact your line manager or whoever has requested you to complete this self-assessment.

Thank you in advance.