People working from home is the reason behind low productivity - Yorkshire Post Letters

From: Paul Morley, Ribblesdale Estate, Long Preston, Skipton.

Reading in the press about all these people, mostly public sector workers, who refuse to return to their places of work and instead ‘work’ from home or in many cases from a sun-kissed foreign beach got me thinking.

If their employers are condoning this practice, which appears to be the case with it being allowed to continue so long post pandemic, who is responsible should an employee suffer an accident during ‘working hours’.

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What if a worker falls at home or receives an electric shock from a dodgy electrical connection to their computer, or god forbid gets stung by a jellyfish on that sun-kissed beach.

A laptop on a dining room table set up to work from home. PIC: Joe Giddens/PA WireA laptop on a dining room table set up to work from home. PIC: Joe Giddens/PA Wire
A laptop on a dining room table set up to work from home. PIC: Joe Giddens/PA Wire

Is the employer liable for failing to provide a safe working environment or is it just summary justice for taking the micky out of the rest of the working population who have to get out of bed every day and go out and earn a crust come rain or shine?

Maybe employers should insist that if their staff wish to work anywhere other than their proper place of work they should, at their own expense, have official safety checks carried out wherever they are going to fire up their laptops and provide their employers with proof of this.

And, if it is a work place shouldn’t local authorities be reassessing rates to include business use, can you apply business rates to six square feet of sand and a stripy deckchair?

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Also, any financial increments to actually turning up at one’s place of work such as London allowance should be stopped forthwith.

Perhaps this might get some people back into the office and help this country out of the embarrassing position of being the only major country in the world where productivity is still below pre-Covid levels.

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