Fifty per cent of workers not reimbursed for home equipment during Covid

Many employees were left to pay for their own home equipment during Covid, but employers are now urged to get more involved.

Brendan Grimes, ergonomic specialist at Officeworks.

Only 5 per cent of companies provided workers with money to purchase home office equipment when they were ordered to work from home during the past two years, according to a new report.

The survey carried out online for Officeworks – which had strong sales of home office furniture during the pandemic – found that 66 per cent of employees used items they already owned when they quickly moved to work remotely in 2020.

As well, 43 per cent brought items home from the workplace.

But about 50 per cent of companies reported some of their employees purchased equipment out of their own pockets, without being reimbursed by their employer.

The survey found 38 per cent of employees reported that their employers made at least some financial contribution to their WFH set-up, with 20 per cent fully reimbursed, 13 per cent using equipment chosen and bought by their employers, and 8 per cent selecting their own equipment that was then purchased by their employer.

Carried out by Empirica Research, the survey of 1000 employees and 500 employers found three-quarters of workers want to keep their home set-up in place even after they return to the office.

But about 70 per cent reported suffering some sort of physical issue while working from home, 41 per cent citing back or neck pain and 31 per cent reporting eye strain.

Only 55 per cent said they had worked in a dedicated office or study; 32 per cent worked in a kitchen or living room, 29 per cent from a spare room and 22 per cent in their bedroom.

But Officeworks, which is promoting a new platform called Flexiworks which offers ergonomic support and facilitates office equipment purchases for companies with remote workers, says only 28 per cent of organisations provided ergonomic assessments of home set-ups and one in five employers admitted they could have done more to support their staff in the transition to working from home.

The main barriers to not doing more included not having enough resources, believing the transition would be temporary and being worried about getting it wrong. The report says many businesses developed their hybrid work protocols on the run during the disruption of Covid-19, and more formal processes now were needed.

When asked to estimate how much money had been budgeted for the needs of each employee, 18 per cent of employers said there was no budget while 30 per cent said $500 or more had been budgeted for each employee.

Officeworks’ ergonomic expert Brendan Grimes says, “like it or not”, employers are legally responsible for the health and safety of workers when working from home and this responsibility cannot be shelved.

He says physical problems may increase with more people working from home but “if it is controlled well and we educate people to look after health and safety” this can be managed.

But companies need to develop policies to improve the patchwork arrangements of Covid-19 lockdowns.

“What tended to happen is that we got into this work from home situation very abruptly and it was ‘let’s just do the best we can to set it all up’,” he says. “As a result the physical side of things has not necessarily been looked after terribly well.”

Grimes says in the early days of the pandemic there was little guidance on how to set up a safe office at home, with basic issues such as the need for two screens rather than one screen or the need for a specific type of mouse overlooked.

He says key issues to check when working at home are ensuring you sit comfortably in your chair, including using the backrest rather than perching; making sure your elbows are at table height; positioning your screen at eye height and at arm’s reach; remembering to have your feet firmly on the floor; and changing your posture as much as you can by alternating between sitting and standing.