A leading employment solicitor is warning that continued working from home could now lead to fresh health and safety complications for employers and employees alike.
Richard Grogan says employers may need to carry out health & safety assessments of employees' homes if they're to allow staff to work from home on a permanent basis.
It comes as a 'return to the workplace' gets underway from today, after two years of predominantly remote working for hundreds of thousands of office workers across the country.
As part of the broad easing of restrictions announced on Friday, the Government's said a "return to physical attendance in workplaces can commence on a phased basis".
IBEC believes most workplaces will adopt a new hybrid approach, with employers not requiring staff to be in the office every day.
Other employers, meanwhile, may be keen to continue allowing full-time remote working in order to satisfy new or existing staff who aren't based locally.
However, the return to workplaces comes ahead of planned new laws aimed at giving staff the right to request remote working.
Richard told The Pat Kenny Show there are likely fresh obstacles for both workers and employers now that the pandemic measures have been eased.
He said: "The information I’m getting… is that an awful lot of employees’ homes, particularly when they’re in apartments, will just not qualify for health & safety purposes.
"There’s going to be employers saying ‘you could work from home, but I can’t let you work from home… because your premises doesn't qualify for health & safety'.
“We’ve taken a fairly laissez-faire approach to it up for now - but once you can go back to the office, that really can’t go on much longer.”
“The employer will now have a workplace that could be in Leitrim, even though they’re based in Dublin. Under the health and safety legislation, that is now a workplace and the employer has to make sure it’s a safe workplace."
Richard said employers having to carry out health & safety assessments of their staff's home workplace could prove expensive.
The Dublin-based solicitor explained that under the current rules, an employee's workplace is set out quite clearly in their contract - which means an employer could also claim a breach of contract if a staff member refuses to return to the office.
He said nobody wants extra litigation or costs, but leaving these issues up to employers and employees alone could just lead to disputes that end up before the WRC.
He said: “Unless the Government is going to bring in legislation… we’re going to have a situation where we have to have these health & safety checks.
“It’s unlikely that most new apartments being built are ever going to qualify to be suitable to have home working.
"That’s the reality I’m hearing at the present time: that’s going to be a major challenge, and you’re actually going to need bigger apartments, not smaller apartments.”
He added it is likely there'll be a permanent shift towards some form of 'blended' working, but the complications around remote working will likely prove a "real challenge" in the coming months and years.
He pointed to one recent case from Germany, where a court ruled that a man who fell during his walk from his bed to his desk while working from home was technically commuting - and therefore could claim workplace accident insurance.
