Does WHS law cover working from home?

What the employer's duty looks like at home

The primary duty is unchanged: provide and maintain a working environment that is safe, so far as is reasonably practicable, including safe systems of work and the information, training and instruction workers need. For home-based work, most organisations meet that through a home workstation self-assessment checklist, written guidance on set-up, provision or reimbursement of some equipment, and a defined way to report hazards and discomfort. Consultation still applies too: a shift to hybrid or remote work is a change that affects health and safety, and workers should have a say in how it is managed.

Reasonable practicability does real work here. It means weighing the likelihood and severity of harm against what can be done about it and what that costs. An employer is not expected to fit out every home like the office, but is expected to know roughly how staff are working, to give them the means to set up sensibly, and to respond when someone reports a problem. A checklist that is issued and never followed up is a control on paper only.

Hazardous manual task risk is the most common home-based WHS issue, and it is almost entirely sustained posture: a laptop on a table with the screen too low and the keyboard attached, a dining chair with no adjustment, and no reason to get up for hours because the printer and the kitchen are both within reach. The Hazardous Manual Tasks Code of Practice lists sustained and awkward posture as a risk factor, and it applies at home exactly as it does in the office.

What the worker's duty looks like at home

Workers must take reasonable care of their own health and safety, follow reasonable instructions and cooperate with reasonable policies. At home that means completing the checklist you are given, using the equipment provided or reimbursed rather than leaving it in the box, following the set-up guidance, and reporting discomfort and hazards the same way you would in the office. Reporting is the part most often skipped; people assume a sore neck from the kitchen table is their own problem, and two years later it is a claim.

It also means being honest in the self-assessment. A checklist answered to get it finished, rather than to describe the actual set-up, gives the employer nothing to act on and removes the record that would show the problem was raised early.

• Complete the home workstation checklist and answer it accurately
• Use the equipment your employer provides or reimburses
• Report discomfort early, through the same channel you would use in the office
• Ask what is available before buying your own solution

Setting up with what you have

A good home set-up does not need a home office. Work at a table and a chair you can adjust or pad, not the couch or the bed. Raise the laptop on a stand or a stack of books until the top of the screen is at eye level, and use an external keyboard and mouse so your hands can be at elbow height while the screen is at eye height; a laptop alone cannot do both. If the chair is too low, a firm cushion helps, and if your feet then dangle, a box under them works as a footrest.

Put the set-up somewhere you can leave it, so it is not rebuilt every morning and gradually abandoned. Take the same movement breaks you would in the office, and more deliberately, because the natural interruptions of an office are missing. Stand for calls. Look away from the screen. Leave the desk every hour or two.

The equipment most employers provide or reimburse for home work is a laptop stand, an external keyboard and mouse, and sometimes a monitor or a chair. Ask before assuming nothing is available. If your set-up is still causing discomfort after the basics are in place, that is a report, not a personal failing.

What the course covers, and where our part ends

Module 2, Australian Work Health and Safety Principles, explains how employer and worker duties extend to home-based work, what consultation means for a move to hybrid working, and the role of the Code of Practice. Module 6, Workstations, Storage and the Occasional Heavy Lift, sets out the workstation principles element by element and then applies them to a home set-up with the equipment most people actually have. Module 8, Reporting, Early Symptoms and Ongoing Safety, covers reporting discomfort and near misses, including from home.

The course gives every employee the same understanding of how a workstation should be set up and why reporting early matters. It does not replace your employer's home working policy, checklist or any workstation assessment they arrange, and those always take precedence. Providing the guidance, the equipment and a channel that responds is the employer's duty; completing the checklist, using the equipment and reporting problems is the worker's; the course is the shared knowledge that makes both easier.

Common questions

Covered in the course

• Module 2: Australian Work Health and Safety Principles
• Module 6: Workstations, Storage and the Occasional Heavy Lift
• Module 8: Reporting, Early Symptoms and Ongoing Safety

Related guides

• Events and meeting rooms
• Whole-organisation rollout
• Required for office staff?
• Archive boxes