Clients quite often ask me whether the Occupational Health and Safety Act in The Netherlands (Arbowet) requires them to offer ergonomic workstation assessments to all colleagues – at the office and at home. And can employers make it mandatory for employees to participate?
This is not a simple yes or no question. The Occupational Health and Safety Act, like almost all laws, speaks mostly in general terms. Exactly what concrete steps an employer should follow cannot be found in the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
This is what the Arbowet (source – in Dutch) says roughly:
The employer must ensure a healthy and safe workplace for the employee and that the workplace is equipped to suit the employee’s personal characteristics. This also applies to your home workplace. This is called the employer’s ‘duty of care’. The extent to which the employer can fulfil this depends on what can reasonably be required. It may be that circumstances make it unreasonable to expect this of the employer.
The employer must actively instruct his employees. How an employee can do their job safely and healthily should be a recurring topic of discussion between employer and employee.
So Dutch labour law effectively obligates employers to ensure ergonomic, safe workplaces at the office and at home. A workstation assessment is the standard way employers prove they’ve met that duty. The height of the fine depends on the size of the company and can be anywhere between €340 and €13,500.
I expect that the Dutch government will get increasingly more strict about the part of the Occupational Health and Safety Act dealing with working from home, as hybrid working becomes the norm for more and more employees. In my opinion, more value is placed by the legislator on prevention, rather than ergonomic furniture (which simply does not fit in many homes – and is therefore not “reasonable”).
My advice for HR departments: make a workstation assessment mandatory for all new colleagues. And work with an occupational therapist, ergonomist or occupational health and safety expert.
Do this not only to fulfil the duty of care outlined in the Occupational Health and Safety Act, but also to save money. A good ergonomist will not recommend you to buy unnecessary ergonomic equipment. The company that supplies your colleagues’ work from home furniture often offer this service for free, but their main goal obviously is to sell you more stuff :).
Extra tip: companies will save a lot of money if they do not allow employees to order ergonomic equipment until after a workstation assessment.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me to discuss!