Chapter 9: Ensuring the Health and Safety of Employees at the Risk of Intimate Partner Violence While Working from Home: New Insights Gained During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Many organisations recently instructed employees to work from home due to lockdowns and restrictions put in place to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the unprecedented increase in intimate partner violence (IPV) during the same period have raised concerns about women’s risk of exposure to IPV when the home and workplace overlap during work-at-home instances. IPV is a global public health problem that negatively affects the health, safety, and productivity of victims and co-workers through various mechanisms. While IPV awareness and policies have developed slowly from an occupational health perspective, the workplace remains crucial in identifying, responding to, and offering support to victims. Thus, as part of preparing for future pandemics and considering that working at home has become the new normal, the overlap between home and the workplace cannot be ignored. This chapter discusses the role of employers and how existing guidelines about employers’ response to IPV can be applied when staff work from home.