Telecommuting continues to gain traction among companies competing for younger or far-flung professionals, or employees whose circumstances make working remotely an attractive benefit, but it also requires a risk management approach, according to a RIMS report.
“The whole horizon has broadened,” with respect to remote work, Carolyn Snow, director of risk management at Humana, told Advisen. “Many more people than we ever assumed could work from home are doing so.”
The total number of teleworkers—those working at home but not self-employed—almost doubled between 2005 to 2012, rising 80 percent, according to Global Workplace Analytics. It placed the total, as of 2012, the most recent year for which data were available, at 3.3 million or 2.6 percent of the total workforce.
While relevant coverage, including workers compensation, general liability and employment practices liability insurance, tend not to distinguish between remote and regular employees, companies should be on the lookout for any exclusions for telecommuters, Snow said.
Risk managers also need to pull together related departments in crafting a clear, companywide policy on working remotely, according to Risk Management and Remote Work Policies by the Risk and Insurance Management Society.
“This is not about flextime; there needs to be a formal policy,” Snow added. Expectations about hours to be worked, measurable objectives and communication need to be set down in writing.
“Human resources usually drives the remote work policy, but part of the development effort should include establishing a cross-functional team that also involves Legal, IT, Employee Health & Safety, Facilities and Risk Management,” said Leslie Lamb, director of global risk management at Cisco Systems, in the RIMS report.
IT, for example, can help ensure that important details such as the way critical information is saved—on a shared and protected network as opposed to the remote employee’s desktop or a thumb-drive—are not overlooked.
The oversight of risk professionals is also needed to confirm that the policy complies with the requirements of the organization’s insurance policies.
“Many of the questions noted on the insurance application will require information about policies and procedures,” said Lori Seidenberg, senior vice president for insurance and risk management at Alden Torch Financial LLC. “The risk professional must know what is included in the remote work policy and what needs to be included in it to protect the organization.”
Thomas Hams, managing director and national EPLI practice leader at Aon Risk Services Central, told Advisen that the lines “can get blurred when an employee is working at home or at another company’s worksite.
“It gets a little more tricky if the individual is alleged to have committed a wrongful act against someone else while working remotely especially given third party coverage under EPLI policies,” Hams said, referring to coverage for non-employees.
“If the employee harasses or discriminates against someone else while at home or another location, the client company may be less certain they want to cover that individual depending on the situation.”
The best approach for clients “with a meaningful amount of employees working remotely is to look to manuscript the appropriate definitions to respond how the client company wants the coverage to work,” Hams said.
Wording in the policy should ensure that “the client company is always protected when they are sued for the alleged acts of an employee,” he said, regardless of his or her perceived capacity as an employee, and that the client has as much “control as possible to determine whether the policy should apply to protect the employee should they be the alleged the wrong doer in the questionable capacity situation.”
Risk professionals and human resource executives face the challenge of determining whether a remote medical incident is a result of business activities and necessitates a workers’ compensation claim, or if the incident was unrelated to the employee’s professional responsibilities—something they must also do for on-site workers when an injury has not been witnessed.
Another issue for telecommuters under EPLI is what the Seidenberg refers to as the “Uber effect, especially regarding off-the-clock work.
“Because people can work anytime, we are looking at employees who carry devices being salaried,” rather than hourly, she said, referring to those instances when employees perform work outside of normal hours, she told Advisen.
“We think we should move all employees to salaries, who have devices,” Seidenberg said.
Her company, an affordable housing developer with 180 employees, currently has 15 or 20 remote workers. With quotas for inspections and reports, the business is conducive to telecommuting.
But while working remotely eliminates commuting time, among other things, it can make separating work from home life harder and increase isolation.
Seidenberg, who worked from home in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, said it’s easy to work more or less than one should and to get “cabin fever.”
Both threaten employee productivity and development, and can be counteracted with frequent communication with the employer and other workers, as well as with clearly stated work expectations.
