Work Performed at Home Can Cause Headaches for Employers.

Scenario:  An employee works at home part of each work week, primarily performing data entry tasks.  One day the employee was carrying a large file folder of forms from his car into his house and was going to his home office to work. However, he stumbled on one of his child’s toys lying on the driveway and fell.  He sprained his right hand and was unable to perform any work either at home or the workplace office for seven work days. The employee feels that the incident is work-related, but the employer is not sure. 

Question:  Should the incident and days missed from work be considered work-related and recorded?

Answer:  1904.5(b)(7) of the OSHA Standard states:

How do I decide if a case is work-related when the employee is working at home? Injuries and illnesses that occur while an employee is working at home, including work in a home office, will be considered work-related if the injury or illness occurs while the employee is performing work for pay or compensation in the home, and the injury or illness is directly related to the performance of work rather than to the general home environment or setting. For example, if an employee drops a box of work documents and injures his or her foot, the case is considered work-related. If an employee’s fingernail is punctured by a needle from a sewing machine used to perform garment work at home, becomes infected and requires medical treatment, the injury is considered work-related. If an employee is injured because he or she trips on the family dog while rushing to answer a work phone call, the case is not considered work-related. If an employee working at home is electrocuted because of faulty home wiring, the injury is not considered work-related.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Recordkeeping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.