Sitting Comfortably? Protecting your Posture when Working from Home

We’re many months into the coronavirus pandemic and a return to office life as we knew it still seems a long way off, if it comes at all. When settling in for the long-term “new normal”, there’s a question every employer needs to be asking their staff: “are you sitting comfortably?” Employees can begin by asking themselves the same question and taking a look at their home working set-up.

Incorrect equipment and bad posture can lead to musculoskeletal issues and, in the short-term, aches and pains. As working from home looks less like a short-term adjustment and more like a reality of working life, employees need to take this into account and let their employer know if they need support. We can show you how.

DSE, Equipment and Posture

Not everyone will have access to a separate home office. But it can help to have a dedicated “working space” – even if it’s a corner of a room that is not used for anything else. This makes it easier to set up display screen equipment in the right way.

Correctly set up DSE will have a huge effect on a worker’s physical health and wellbeing. Crouching over a laptop might not do too much damage immediately (aside from some neck ache, perhaps!) but over weeks, it can add up to a serious issue. It can also make existing conditions worse.

You need to make sure you’re sitting in the right position. Make sure your back is straight, your arms are supported and your feet are touching the ground. Regularly check this so you’re not falling into a slouching position or sitting in exactly the same position for hours at a time.

Stretch and Move

It can be easy to get engrossed in work and suddenly realise several hours have passed without getting up and moving! Set up a timer if needed and make sure you get up and about at least every hour – even if it’s just to pop downstairs and get a drink.

Our Spinal Awareness short course explores some of the stretching exercises that you can do at your desk or in your workspace. They can help to prevent many health problems and, apart from the physical effects, it’s psychologically beneficial.

Here are some other ideas for keeping active:

  • Take a lunch time walk. It’s a great way to keep active at a regular time and breaks up the day. When working from home, it can be easy to go entire days without leaving the house; lunch time brisk walks help to counter this.
  • Have a pre-work workout. One for the morning people, perhaps! Why not use some of the time you used to use commuting on an exercise regime? You’ll certainly feel awake after that…
  • Mix up your workspace. If you’re sick of sitting in the same place, why not move to another room and work in the kitchen for a bit? This has to be balanced with the need to have properly set-up DSE – but for a brief respite, if you can, it can help to mix it up a bit.

You don’t need to do a full-blown fitness regime to keep active throughout the day. Just a couple of minor breaks and a lunch-time walk can make a world of difference to your physical and mental wellbeing.

Protecting Homeworkers’ Health and Safety

The recent HSE update to their guidance on protecting homeworkers has become even more pertinent following the new Government directive to work from home where possible.

Just as many workers were returning to their offices, albeit in a very different capacity to which they left them, the trend is now set to reverse with numbers working from home likely to rise again.

The updated guidance reiterates the need for employers to demonstrate the same duty of care towards employees who work from home as they do for on-site staff.

HSE guidance and how training can help

The importance of adhering to the guidelines is twofold:

  • To look after your employees and ensure their wellbeing, both physical and mental
  • To ensure that your business is compliant and operating within the guidelines, negating the possibility of any future accusations of not following the correct procedures which could leave the company open to financial penalties.

In order to help keep your employees safe and your business compliant, eLearning can help employers ensure that they are providing the best possible level of care to the health and safety needs of their employees.

Employees can take the training at home and as they are likely to be in their current working environment they can make any changes necessary to improve their safety quickly and easily.

eLearning can cover the key areas contained within the HSE guidelines and is ideally suited to ensuring that you and your employees are working in a safe environment.

The guidelines refer specifically to DSE (Display Screen Equipment), Mental Health and Stress and state that:

As an employer when someone is working from home, permanently or temporarily, you should consider:

  • How will you keep in touch with them?
  • What work activity will they be doing (and for how long)?
  • Can it be done safely?
  • Do you need to put control measures in place to protect them?

This is as important now as it was when employees first started to work from home on a widespread scale, following restrictions imposed in March.

It could be argued that it is actually even more important as time has progressed, with feelings of isolation likely to have grown the longer home working has gone on.

To say that everybody who has switched to working from home has suffered mentally isn’t true; studies have shown that a high number of people have flourished, citing increased flexibility, lack of commute and reduced distractions as just some of the reasons for a reduction in stress and improvement in overall mental health.

DSE and working from home

One of the key things to consider about the home office space is DSE. We all know that incorrectly set up screens can cause musculoskeletal issues and other health problems and that this has to be a core area of concern for employers moving towards homeworking; but how do employers and employees alike mitigate this risk?

The answer is with targeted training that can be delivered at home, namely eLearning. Getting your employees to undergo training specifically focused on DSE will help to achieve the goals of ensuring their safety and demonstrating you taking responsibility as an employer.

Training should include points such as:

  • How to set up DSE correctly to maximise safety
  • Exercises to minimise the risks of injury
  • Importance of regular breaks
  • Relevant legislation

To discover more about successfully training your employees to set up their DSE safely, we have a number of options available.

Stress

The HSE guidance explicitly mentions the greater need for employers to ensure the mental health of their homeworking staff is protected.

Studies have shown that a number of people have seen improvements to their mental health since working from home, citing increased flexibility, lack of commute and reduced distractions as just some of the reasons for a reduction in stress.

However, for a great many others, feelings of isolation, loneliness and detachment from the workplace has led to a rise in stress and a deterioration in mental health.

This is where managers have had to step up and will continue to need to do so. Increased communication from managers is vital to help with feelings of isolation, as is the need to be able to recognise early warning signs and symptoms of stress in employees.

We have a set of resources specifically designed to help employees recognise their own signs of stress and to help manage it, along with resources for managers to learn how to manage stress in their team.

Home Working Risk Assessments

Many of the risks inherent to homeworking are the same as working in the office: setting up display screen equipment correctly, minimising slips and trips and taking extra precautions if lone working for example.

Home working environments should have had a thorough risk assessment carried out at the outset. Even if this was the case, now is a good time to be re-visiting it to ensure that the working environment remains safe.

We created a Home Working Risk Assessment for precisely this purpose and provides a comprehensive tool for ensuring the safety if your employees.

It focuses on three core areas: your home workspace, working design and taking care of yourself. From looking after your mental health all the way to electrical safety, no homeworking topic is neglected. There is also an extra section for people with line management responsibilities.

Summary

The recent updates to the HSE guidelines about protecting home workers are a timely reminder that we cannot be complacent about the health and safety of homeworkers.

Coupled with the new advice from the government regarding working from home where possible, now is the perfect opportunity to refresh your employees training to maximise their safety.

Our solutions provide a high quality, cost effective solution to your training needs in order to mitigate risk and keep your employees safe.

Millennials, COVID-19 and Technology

Millennials, COVID-19 and Technology

The effects of the COVID-19 outbreak are unprecedented in living memory. Almost unique in peacetime, the changes to society, work and leisure are far-reaching, with major measures to prevent the spread of the virus in place in every country touched by it.

The crisis has shone a light on the central role of technology in our society. If our reliance on modern tech was something to be concerned about beforehand, it has become nothing short of vital now. Perhaps the Millennial generation – long mocked for their supposed obsession with technology over real-world interactions – are specially placed to adjust to these changes.

The Role of Technology

With many people confined to their homes for the foreseeable future, our internet connections have to stand in for many of the building blocks of normal life:

  • Work: Those who are able to work from home have been told to do so. This has created an army of remote workers, many of them working from home for extended periods for the first time in their careers.
  • Education: Since schools closed, many parents and family members are finding themselves in the role of temporary teachers. The internet provides endless content for activities to keep children happy, engaged and learning during the closure period, as well as providing a handy way for teachers to put work online for their students.
  • Social Lives: With gatherings forbidden, technology allows us to remember that “social distancing” only refers to physical distance. Keeping in contact with our friends and family remotely is more important than ever. When phone calls and social media posts just aren’t enough, video calls can give us that much-needed dose of human interaction.
  • Shopping: People have been advised to shop online for essentials where they’re able to. It’s not always possible – due to the greater demand, delivery slots are harder to come by – but where it can be done, it avoids unnecessary interaction with others and helps to stop the spread of the virus.

While for many people this is a revolution in how they live their lives, for many millennials, it is an intensifying of habits they already had.

Coming of age in the early 2000s, millennials were the first generation to fully embrace social media and go through the latter stages of school and university with broadband internet access close at hand. Keeping in touch with friends in far-flung places, ordering items online and doing work – or school work – at home is second nature to many. Though it is of course a generalisation, it may be the older generation who are feeling the most strain from the coronavirus lockdown.

Every generation expresses a preference for some flexibility in where they work from, but this has been particularly strong for millennials. For years before the crisis began, this age group were showing a strong desire to work from home where possible. It’s hard to predict what long-term effects the coronavirus lockdown will have on working practices, but with widespread home-working becoming the new (temporary) norm, it could be that more employers follow this line in the future, adapting their business demands to the needs of millennial workers.

Pulling Together

Now more than ever, society needs to pull together – and that needs effort from people in all age groups.

This period has been full of examples of the best social media has to offer the world. For example, within a few days of the shutdown there were hundreds of Mutual Aid groups on Facebook, where local people who were vulnerable, self-isolating or running low on essential supplies could ask for help. There have also been successful fundraising efforts to help those most at risk of the virus, such as the Robin Hood Fund in Nottingham.

Video calling technology has also been useful for connecting older people who cannot leave their homes or receive visitors to their families – proving that far from pushing people apart as opponents of such technology have suggested, it can actually bring people separated by circumstances closer together.

Helpful Resources

Here are some more helpful tips and resources to help you while remote working:

Remote Working awareness course

Try our Remote Working awareness course to stay safe and healthy away from the office.

Information Security awareness training

With the flexibility to work from home in the current climate, it’s a great time to refresh your knowledge of keeping business information secure and working safely online. Try our awareness training courses on key information security topics to working safely and securely away from the office.

Business Contingency Plan (BCP) for Infection Outbreaks

A blog post with helpful tips for businesses on drawing up a business contingency plan and ensuring business continuity.

Mental Health While Working Remotely

A blog post with helpful tips on how to care for your mental health while working from home for longer periods.

Refresher Training in the Age of Home Working

People have been predicting a sharp rise in working from home for years. Sadly, it’s come to pass in a way few would have predicted, and nobody would have wished for.

The Covid-19 crisis continues to change the way we live and work in profound ways. Even for workplaces that can shift to a largely remote working model, it is a large change to make with very little preparation time. Individuals too are transitioning to performing their roles in ways they wouldn’t have predicted a few weeks ago.

In the midst of these difficulties and fast-moving changes, how does your training plan fit into all this?

A Remote Model of Learning

The key word for getting businesses through the coronavirus outbreak is “adaptability”. With eLearning, adaptability is one of its greatest strengths.

Employees working from home and juggling their job’s demands and a sudden increase in childcare responsibilities will need extra flexibility with hours. Rolling out eLearning courses is the perfect solution. Courses can be taken whenever it suits the learner and you can be sure that everyone is getting the same information.

Modern eLearning is designed to be accessible. People can take their courses on whichever device is most convenient or comfortable for them.

Training for Remote Workers

There are many topics that lend themselves to being the focus of refresher training during the period of coronavirus.

Cyber security is one of the most obvious. Being outside of the traditional working environment – for the first time for many – it can be easy to forget the basics of protecting yourself and your data. Some refresher training in this area can remind people of cyber sec’s importance and protect them, and your business, from anyone trying to take advantage of the situation by exploiting poor cyber security.

With such an upheaval in working practices, it can help to get a refresher on risk assessments. Spotting potential hazards is just as important at home and we might even forget to look out for them because we’re generally more at ease in a familiar environment.

Social media has been buzzing with people sharing their (often very improvised) home working stations. While amusing in many cases, it’s important to remember the need for good display screen equipment (DSE) set ups. Though this can of course be challenging in a household with minimal free space or with several people working from home at once, employers still have a duty of care to their employees to help them avoid musculoskeletal problems from bad DSE usage. Providing refresher training can help jog people’s memories.

Remote working is in itself a new challenge for many. Sending out general remote working training can be very helpful at a time like this. Even in a crisis, there are benefits to this style of working, and many might find themselves feeling more productive. Yet staying connected to others and being aware of the issues around remote working can be helpful.

One area that might be overlooked is mental health. Workplace stress was a huge, widespread issue even before the coronavirus outbreak. Current events will be exacerbating existing anxiety. Employers should do all they reasonably can to watch out for their employees’ mental health and support them where they need it. Stress management courses might help people to handle their current work stress – or even help with the stress from other areas of their lives.

Refreshing eLearning

Everyone involved in training knows it is not just a simple “one time and done” job. Our brains don’t work like that. We need our knowledge to be topped up and used regularly, with training filling in any gaps that might be left over from the first time round.

This is where eLearning really comes into its own. Training schedules can be adapted year on year to make sure the basics are still covered, but people aren’t taking the exact same course over and over again. People can take short courses to address any small gaps in knowledge.

Not at Home?

It’s important to remember that not everyone has the luxury of switching to a remote working model. Many jobs can’t be done remotely, including those of key workers such as hospital staff.

For their benefit and everyone else’s, we are making our Preventing the Spread of Infection course free for the next 12 months.

Using Display Screen Equipment (DSE) Safely

Screens are so intrinsic to our working life that it’s easy to forget we’re using them; however, if they’re not set up correctly they can cause a whole host of musculoskeletal issues and other physical problems. With many businesses now having a substantial number of staff working remotely at home, and perhaps the frequency and length of using Display Screen Equipment (DSE) having increased due to new working practices, this raises potential issues of compliance with DSE regulations and an area of concern for employers.

Under the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992, employers have a duty to protect employees from screen-related harm, and to train people to use screens safely. Beyond the legal obligation, it makes good business sense to ensure that employees have the essential business tools needed to do their jobs, and work productively – without damaging their health.

Poorly structured workstations and work environments can lead to back, neck and shoulder pain, as well as repetitive strain injuries that can affect the hands, wrists and arms. Too much screen time can also cause damage to eyes, cause fatigue, and reduce our ability to perform our jobs well.

The law applies to all colleagues that use DSE in their work, including home workers, in-house employees and ‘hot-deskers’ – who may not have a permanent desk, but still need to have a safe, sustainable work space.

Display screen assessments

If workers use screens every day, for an hour or more, employers must complete a DSE workstation assessment to evaluate their current workstation layout. The assessment should be conducted by a trained assessor and whilst DSE specifically refers to screens in its name, the assessment should evaluate an employee’s entire workstation. This includes things such as any peripherals (e.g. keyboard and mouse) and work furniture, such as desks and chairs—as well as the screens themselves. Not only that, it should also evaluate an employee’s general environment, including the lighting, temperature, humidity and noise levels in their workstation. All of these elements can impact how the equipment is used.

Fundamentally, the assessment aims to evaluate how DSE is used and identifies any possible risks in doing so—ultimately ensuring that employees have the equipment, facilities and guidance they need to work safely and effectively.

When should you do a DSE assessment?

A DSE assessment should be carried out every time a new workstation is set up, when a new employee starts work or when there is a significant change made to an employee’s workstation.

Where workers are working from home on a temporary basis, you could simply ask them to complete an assessment checklist on their own, however for longer-term or permanent home workers, the risks are greater and as such, you should ideally have someone conduct a full workstation assessment – either in person or remotely.

What measures can an employer take to reduce DSE health risks?

Taking breaks

Encourage employees to take breaks from using DSE. This might mean attending a meeting, preparing paperwork or delivering a presentation. The key thing is that colleagues perform a variety of work tasks and take breaks from using display screens.

Ergonomic workspaces

In many modern offices, employees share desks and work from a variety of spaces, such as their home, meeting rooms, canteens and cafes. While this variety can be refreshing for our colleagues, consideration must be given to the effects of working in non-traditional spaces.

How can employees work safely if they are crouching over their laptop on a crowded train? While not all situations can be improved, employees can install flexible workspace equipment so that desks and monitors can be easily adjusted to suit different people.

Encouraging employees to use external monitors and mice can help improve posture and reduce repetitive strain injuries (RSI).

Eye tests

You must provide eye tests if employees request them. While using screens doesn’t cause eye damage, it can very tiring on eyes, and can make people aware of eye conditions that they hadn’t noticed previously. If your employees need glasses just for DSE work, then you must provide them.

DSE Training

Employers must provide training on how to use DSE safely. This training should include:

  • Understanding the risks of incorrect DES usage
  • How to set up DSE equipment
  • Reducing glare and reflections
  • Risk assessments
  • Taking breaks
  • Reporting concerns

Display screen equipment eLearning from VinciWorks

Do you need to deliver DSE training to your colleagues? Our eLearning courses make training quick and easy to deliver in any location. Online DSE courses are affordable making it easy to refresh periodically – or to provide to new starters. Contact us to arrange a demo or get a quote.