As remote work enters another year as a mainstream concept, injuries in the workplace have become a proliferating grey zone for employers, employment lawyers and worker compensation boards to navigate.
Overall, total workplace injury claims haven’t risen and aren’t expected to, numerous lawyers said. But when home is where the workplace is, delineating work tasks from personal ones in the case of injury is becoming an increasing area of focus for employment lawyers.
“This remote work environment throws disarray into things because it’s kind of a weird context physically where the injuries can occur,” Richard Johnson, a partner at Vancouver-based Ascent Employment Law told Postmedia News.
A Quebec ruling earlier this month found that an Air Canada call centre employee who injured herself walking down a staircase in her home merited workers’ compensation. The judge found that, because she was taking a mandatory lunch break, the injury occurred during work hours and inside the workplace.
The judge said the employee’s injury fit the definition of a “sudden and unexpected event that occurred during work.”
While it’s unclear whether related cases have been adjudicated in B.C., similarly foggy circumstances aren’t new in employment law, according to Alissa Demerse, a partner at Roper-Greyell, a B.C. workplace law firm. It’s not uncommon for employees to file claims for sustaining an injury on a personal basis outside of work hours,...
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