Health & Safety Training for Homeworkers

Overview

Regardless of where an employee works, the employer still has a responsibility to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of their employees, as far as is reasonably practicable. It is essential that employers train their homeworkers on how to recognise the possible risks when working at home including manual handling, DSE, slips trips and falls, and fire hazards.

This online training course is for people who work at home, some, or all of the time. It is designed to teach the user their responsibilities when it comes to employees working at home, and best practice for safe working from their home.

Learning Outcomes

In this course you will learn:

The risks and hazards you may face while working at home and how to prevent them.
How to communicate any accidents or incidents to your employer and/or the emergency services when working from home.
Your responsibilities towards safety when working from home, as well as that of your employer.

Course Contents

This course consists of four sections:

Section 1: responsibilities and legal requirements

Section 1 of this course explains how responsibility for health and safety is divided between employer and employee in the event that you are working from home.

Section 2: hazards and risks

Section 2 looks at the common hazards that might be found in your home workspace. This includes risks of slips, trips, falls, fire, and electricity, as well as the consequences of poor posture.

Section 3: working at home

Section 3 considers how the realities of working from home may differ from working in the office, exploring topics such as maintaining good communication with your colleagues, and the effects of loneliness and stress. Here, we include techniques of how to avoid distractions and maintain a good work-life balance when both environments are combined.

Section 4: safety and emergency procedures

The final section in this course explains what to do in the case of an emergency while working from home. This includes how to call the emergency services, and the information you need to provide and to whom for the purposes of work safety records.

About the Course

The Health and Safety Training for Homeworkers course is designed to make you aware of the safety precautions that still apply to you, even if you are not working on site. It provides foundational knowledge for good health and safety practices in the workplace, wherever that workplace might be.

This course, divided into four sections, begins by assessing the common risks that you might face when working from home, offering practical advice on how to reduce them to a safe level. It then discusses health and safety responsibilities and what you can do to ensure your wellbeing is addressed, including consideration of some of the emotional impacts of working from home, such as loneliness. Finally, it details what you should do in an emergency, and what information should be recorded.

Available in 31 languages, the course takes around 50 minutes to complete.