Issue |
SHS Web Conf.
Volume 131, 2022
8th International Multidisciplinary Research Conference SOCIETY. HEALTH. WELFARE
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|
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Article Number | 01006 | |
Number of page(s) | 10 | |
Section | Society | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/202213101006 | |
Published online | 11 January 2022 |
Lack of workplace risk assessment as a predictor of adverse health effects for teleworkers - results from the survey on Life with COVID-19 in Latvia
Riga Stradins University, Institute of Occupational Health and Environmental Health, Riga, Latvia
* Corresponding author: linda.matisane@rsu.lv
Workplace risk assessment is one of the key tools for improving occupational safety and health conditions. However, providing risk assessment for teleworkplaces in the COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions has been a challenge for employers. The objective of this study was to identify the frequency of implementation of workplace risk assessment for teleworkplaces and the association between it and self-reported health complaints among teleworkers during the 1st emergency state of the COVID-19 pandemic in Latvia. Teleworkers were recruited using a non-probability sampling (snowball sampling) method and social media advertisements. To obtain data that is representative of the demographic profile of the working population in Latvia, the sample was weighed based on gender and age. Out of 447 teleworking respondents included in our analysis, only 20.3% have mentioned that their employer had assessed the teleworking conditions (additional 8.1% reported partial assessment). Workers who have reported lack of risk assessment more often have health related complaints – e.g., pain longer than three days (26.9% with risk assessment versus 73.1% with no risk assessment), sore eyes (24.4% versus 75.6%) and anxiety (21.8% versus 78.2%) (p < 0.001 in all cases, except for pain). Increased incidence of occupational musculoskeletal diseases and burnout can be predicted in coming years in Latvia. Good practise examples should be gathered and promoted; guidelines for labour inspection should be developed in order to cover supervision of teleworking workplaces.
Key words: workplace risk assessment / telework / distance work / home office / health effects
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2022
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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