Are You A CEO? Would You Swap Workspaces With Your Team?
The pandemic has pushed the wellbeing of workers back into the spotlight. If the blogs are to be believed, businesses are making the shift to a more ‘human-centric workplace model’, but what does this really mean and is it actually happening?
Is ‘human-centric’ just another corporate buzz-word, thrown around at board meetings or are business leaders genuinely committed to making meaningful changes within their organisation for the benefit of their workers?
I recently sat down with Sarah, a senior health & safety executive at a multinational company with over 20,000 employees, to discuss this issue. I was surprised to receive a refreshingly honest appraisal of her organisation’s efforts to support the health, safety and wellbeing of remote workers. At the same time, I was encouraged by her genuine desire to do more for the physical and mental wellbeing of her team.
Here’s what I learned from talking to Sarah:
Flexible working is fully supported at Sarah’s company with no expectations for staff to return to the office in any capacity. In 2022, the vast majority of staff have elected to continue working from home.
At the start of the pandemic, staff were allowed to take home basic equipment such as laptops and office chairs and were required to complete an online training module about home workspace health and safety. Since the start of the pandemic, this strategy has not been reviewed or evaluated for its ongoing efficacy.
Team members working from home were not routinely offered assistance to set up their home workspaces ergonomically. Only those workers who actively reported to be experiencing pain or to have sustained a work-related injury were referred to an external injury management provider.
There were no processes in place that would allow Sarah to proactively identify potential WHS risks in her team’s home workspaces and develop informed strategies to mitigate these risks before injuries occur, not only at an individual level, but across the entire company.
Sarah had never actually seen any of her team’s home workspaces and there were no processes in place that would enable her to do so.
Sarah acknowledged that she was concerned about a lack of information and documentary evidence to demonstrate her organisation’s compliance with regards to home workspace health & safety across their entire workforce.
Despite ‘ticking the boxes’ for minimum compliance, Sarah knew that her company could be doing much more to support the mental and physical wellbeing of workers.
Sarah was still working from a laptop on her dining room table and had been struggling for months due to hip and low back pain related to sitting at her home workstation.
Sarah’s organisation and her personal situation are far from unique. The pandemic has had a devastating effect on business confidence which has led to unprecedented levels of indecision and delayed, reactive intervention on the part of business leaders.
It is deeply concerning that many employers still seem to have the blinkers on when it comes to supporting worker wellbeing, content to ‘tick the boxes’ for minimum compliance, send their remote team a hamper once a year and cross their fingers that none of their workers will experience physical or mental injury while working from home and sue them.
From my experience, truly progressive companies that offer flexible working arrangements, supported by targeted, evidence based WHS interventions are few and far between. Make no mistake, such businesses will become employers of choice that attract and retain skilled talent while the competition loses their credibility and reputation.
