Injured foot while working from home – does not receive occupational injury coverage
In a recent decision (HR-2024-1571-A), the Supreme Court has concluded that injuries that occur during breaks in a home office are not covered by occupational injury coverage. Because the doctor who was injured during a break was at home and not at work when she was injured, the Supreme Court concluded that the injury was not covered by the National Insurance Scheme's occupational injury coverage.
The judgement could have a major impact on employees who work from home on a weekly basis and are injured during breaks.
Section 13-6, second paragraph of the National Insurance Act states that occupational injury coverage applies to occupational injuries that occur while the employee is ‘working at the workplace during working hours’. The Supreme Court's reasoning is that the wording does not provide a basis for an expanded interpretation to also include breaks at the home office, even though case law provides a basis for coverage for injuries during breaks at work at the workplace.
The accident in the case in question occurred while the doctor in specialisation at Oslo University Hospital was on weekend duty as primary on call. These on-call doctors work both from home and at the emergency unit. It is a requirement that the on-call doctor is available by phone and must be able to respond to work within 30 minutes. On Sunday 29 July, the doctor had a work session at home. She then took a lunch break before travelling to the unit to continue working. During her lunch break, she went out into the garden to eat and fell down an uneven patch of ground. The doctor suffered permanent injuries to her foot.
The Supreme Court's judgement was delivered with dissent (3-2). Although breaks are covered while the employee is at work at the workplace, the majority of the Supreme Court believes that the same cannot apply to home offices. In its reasoning, the majority states, among other things, that:
“The home also lacks the temporal division between working life and private life that other workplaces facilitate, in that you come to the workplace and go from there. Private pursuits and work tasks can therefore to a greater extent be carried out interchangeably in the home. These special features indicate that the assessment made of injuries that occur during breaks at the ordinary place of work or at another place designated by the employer cannot simply be transferred to injuries that occur during breaks at home, even if the place of work is considered to have been temporarily moved there.”
The minority believes that occupational injury coverage must also apply to meal breaks in a home office, a form of work that is now widespread. The minority believes that the doctor was ‘at work’ and that case law provides a basis for covering ‘some of the risks of daily life, typically injuries occurring during rest breaks’.
The judgement can probably be read as a reflection of the fact that the rules on occupational injury coverage are not completely up to date and adapted to the reality for many employees who work from home. It cannot be ruled out that, in the wake of this judgement, new assessments will be made of which rules should apply, and that there may be legislative changes in due course. In the meantime, it is very important for all employers and employees to be aware of this ‘gap’ in the National Insurance Scheme's occupational injury coverage, and to take it into account when assessing the use of home offices.
