Can you get injured on the job…at home?
Whether you are working from home temporarily due to bad weather, or permanently as a remote worker, it’s important to consider how safe your home office is. From chronic ergonomics issues to slips, trips, and falls, your home can be a workplace hazard.
“With Organize Your Home Office Day coming up on March 13, now is the time to address some safety risks when you’re working from home,” said Angie Wisher, senior safety management consultant at SAIF. “You can just as easily get injured at home as you can at work.”
A recent study by FlexJobs found that Oregon has the third-highest rate of employees working from home—with 6.4 percent of workers telecommuting full time. That doesn’t include workers who work from home during part of the week, or during winter weather like we saw last month.
Luckily, there are simple—and inexpensive—things you can do to make work safer at home. SAIF’s latest video offers tips anyone can do at home to stay safe:
- Remove tripping hazards by securing cords and clearing any obstacles.
- Focus on your sitting–ensure your feet are flat on the ground with your upper legs horizontal to the floor.
- Keep your wrists in a straight line with your arms, not bent up or down when you’re typing, by adjusting your keyboard or chair height.
- If you use a laptop, consider adding a separate monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
- Adjust your monitor, making sure the screen is an arm’s length away.
- Make sure the top third of your screen is at eye level (you can use books or reams of paper to bring your monitor to the right height). Bifocal or trifocal users may need to lower the monitor.
- Get up and move!
Read more about ergonomics, including inexpensive ideas for setting up your home office on the SAIF website.
About SAIF
SAIF is Oregon’s not-for-profit workers’ compensation insurance company. For more than 100 years, we’ve been taking care of injured workers, helping people get back to work, and striving to make Oregon the safest and healthiest place to work. For more information, visit the About SAIF page on saif.com.