Remote working, working from home, flexible working – whatever you want to call it, staff working at locations other than their main business address applies to most companies.
It may be only a day or two here or there with a laptop, or you could have staff that spend 90% of their time home working and only pop into the office once or twice a month.
Not only does this have health and safety and employment contract considerations, you also have to think about whether your office insurance policy provides suitable cover.
In the main there are two areas of cover that this affects. Firstly, employers liability insurance. As we all know, or should do, if you employ anyone then you need to have adequate cover in place, at a minimum limit of indemnity of £5,000,000. This should cover your employees wherever they are working, staff in the office, sales staff at a conference or employees working from home. Most policies will automatically include this as, legally, you are not allowed to have too many restrictions on EL cover. But, some of the fringe insurers, who shall remain nameless, do have a few sneaky conditions. Make sure though, that your broker is aware that you have staff potentially working throughout the UK.
The second point is for your business assets. You need to have an “all risks” section that covers laptops, IT, smart phones etc so that if they are stolen from an address other than the office, you have cover in place.