A Home Office Checklist For Long-Term Ergonomics

What Is a Working From Home Checklist?

Working from a home office has become the reality for many workers since March 2020. However, similar to an office setting, the home has countless seen and unseen dangers lurking in wait for their moment of attack. Employees should take extra care to make their home office as safe as possible so that they may work productively. This is why many employers have opted to use a home office checklist because it gives their employees a visual step-by-step guide to ensuring their safety in these unprecedented times.

A home office setup checklist includes safe workplace audits, ergonomic assessments, issue documentation, and team management. A home office checklist helps make working in the home office a more efficient and safe place.

This article addresses the following topics:

1. A home office checklist to perform a risk assessment

2. Working safe from home

2. Points on a home office checklist

3. A digital home office checklist application

What Is a Home Office Checklist And Why Use One?

When setting up the home office, a one-time risk assessment of the workplace must be completed. This is done by a workplace safety specialist who walks through the office looking to mitigate the risk of common workplace perils. A working from home safety checklist can be used to document and assess the current condition of the home office workplace.

Although we feel very safe at home, the home office workplace also carries some risks. In particular, psychological stress, as well as adherence to work schedules and social isolation, should definitely be assessed and documented.

How Can I Work Safetly From Home?

Proper equipment is just as important in a home office as it is in a professionally furnished office. An ergonomic workstation, adequate lighting conditions, and taking breaks is still a challenge for many employees. Organizing daily communications, short meetings, and larger sessions from the home office are also still unfamiliar challenge to many work-from-home employees.

A home office setup checklist serves as a useful guide to keeping your home office safe. Employers can use a home office checklist to better assess employee working conditions. The following aspects are covered by a home office checklist.

• Working Environment
• Workplace
• Lighting
• Room Climate
• Ergonomic Equipment
• Working Equipment
• Work Organization
• Internet Access

Let’s delve deeper into the four areas your working from home ergonomic checklist must cover.

What Should I Include on a Home Office Checklist?

Pandemics have been known to pop up from time to time, such as SARS in 2003, the 1981 AIDS/HIV crisis, and the 1957 Asian flu pandemic, to name a few of the more recent ones. However, for many, these were tragedies were far removed from the daily lives of most of the population as these diseases surfaced in distant countries. The COVID-19 pandemic was the first disease in recent history that completely upset the normal day-to-day operations of so many people.

WIth its appearance, it’s brought with it an onslaught of unparalleled dangers and stressors. One of the most prevalent of which was the necessity to work from home. Office workers who are not used to a 24 hour day at home, might not be aware of its associated risks, so here is a list of four ideas to make the transition to the new normal more accessible.

1. Home Office Safety

When the pandemic turned the whole world upside down, employees were forced to work from home. Undeniably, working from home is now part of the new normal and many of us are not prepared for this situation. Employers need to help their employees make sure they are protected because safety hazards are present at home like any other workplace.

The first step to guaranteeing your employees’ safety while doing their jobs from home is to assess their home office for potential hazards. A home office safety checklist is a useful tool that will help you identify all the hazards in your employees’ workspace. This part of a home office checklist will guide you in performing an at-home hazard assessment.

A sample office safety checklist can include the following:

1. The home office is conducive to work and is free from noise and distractions
2. The home office has enough space for the workstation, equipment, and work-related materials
3. Floors are free from trip hazards
4. File drawers are not too heavy and must not open to narrow aisles
5. Phone lines and electrical cords are hidden and situated far from a heat source
6. There is enough lighting and ventilation

2. Ergonomics

Apart from the general safety concerns, it is also important to consider your employee’s posture. In this case, an Ergonomic Evaluation Checklist can be handy.

It is a checklist you can use to ensure your employee is comfortable while working and that they don’t run the risk of developing health issues due to poor posture. A sample Ergonomic Evaluation Checklist may include:

1. Chair legs are sturdy and the wheels are secure enough to prevent falls
2. Chair height is adjustable
3. The chair’s backrest provides sufficient support for your back
4. The chair has a footrest or just high enough for your feet to rest on the floor
5. Your desk provides enough leg room
6. Lighting is sufficient and does not cause eye strain
7. Your computer is free from glare
8. The top of your computer screen is at eye level
9. You have a space to rest your arms when needed

3. COVID-19

Employers should also implement policies that set expectations to employees about their health self-assessments. Employers can use a COVID-19 Self-Assesment Checklist for Home Office to guide their workers in looking after their personal health and well-being.

When creating guidelines for Covid-19 self-assessment for employees, you should consider confidentiality, worker safety, and how to prevent employee noncompliance. A good COVID-19 health inspection checklist should cover:

1. Personal health and hygiene
2. Work area
3. Workplace
4. Fire and electrical safety
5. Stress and well-being
6. Slipping, tripping, and danger of falling
7. Isolation or working alone

4. Team Management

Team management is difficult. More so if your team is remote. Remote team managers need to work with team members who have varying personalities, habits, and schedules. On top of that, managers also need to balance their time so they can tackle their to-dos.

A working from home office checklist could also include actions you can take to make sure your team works well even when you are not together in the same place. A checklist can help make sure you perform activities that

1. Get your employees’ technology right
2. Make sure everyone has access to the technology they need to perform their tasks
3. Provide tech training and support if needed
4. Set clear rules around what technology to use and their specific purposes
5. Define communication channels
6. Setting availability hours
7. Discuss team roles
8. Celebrate successes
9. Inject some fun, casual discussion, and non-work conversations
10. Monitor employee workloads

A Digital Tool for a Home Office Checklist application

Working safely and efficiently from a home office can be a challenge for your employees. A digital app helps teams work safely from the home office and communicate effectively with colleagues. At the same time, the team can be managed quite easily via the app. Tasks can be assigned via the app and completed projects can be viewed transparently for everyone.

Protect your team and yourself by conducting a risk assessment for the home office. To ensure that the daily work routines in the home office are safe and healthy, it is worthwhile to use digital checklists to check occupational safety in the home office. Through the regular checks and simple evaluation of the data in the Lumiform software, you avoid productivity and wage losses.

Benefit from further advantages with Lumiform.

• The flexible checklist builder from Lumiform helps you to convert any individual paper list into a digital checklist quickly and efficiently.
• Using the super intuitive mobile app, you and your teammates can conduct checks in the field with ease.
• All results, images, and comments are automatically bundled in a digital report.