Employee safety and telecommuting: where does the employer’s responsibility end?

14 August 2020

With the explosion of telecommuting, as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, the actual working time as well as the working environment is no longer controlled by the employer.

It is to Norbert Wiener, an American mathematician, that we owe the invention of telework in 1950. It consists in carrying out professional tasks that could have been carried out in the company’s premises outside of them by using information and communication technologies. At the time of this Covid-19 pandemic, many companies are using it. The French ones do not derogate from the practice. Hence the question of how French legislation conceives the employer’s safety obligation in the context of telework?

What does French law say about the responsibility of employers, in the face of risks, in the context of telework?

According to Article L.1222-9 of the French Labour Code, “the teleworker has the same rights as the employee who performs his work on the company’s premises”. It follows then that in terms of safety at work, the employer also has obligations towards the teleworker. In fact, telework involves many risks such as physical risks, visual risks, risks of electromagnetic fields, risks of musculoskeletal disorders, injuries etc.

Thus, Article L. 1222-9 of the Labor Code explicitly states that “an accident occurring at the place where telework is carried out during the performance of the teleworker’s professional activity is presumed to be a work-related accident.

To avoid these accidents as much as possible, the employer must ensure safety and protect workers by avoiding risks; evaluating risks that cannot be avoided; fighting risks at the source and, above all, by adapting work to people.