The employee was working from home. On his way to his desk, one floor below his bedroom, while walking on the staircase connecting the rooms, he slipped and broke his back.

Considering that he took the stairs to the home office for the purpose of starting to work in the direct interests of the employer, and that the accident occurred at the time when the employee usually started work, the Court ruled that the trip on the stairs was insured as an activity in the interest of the employer.

The decision is based on the amended Seventh Book of the German Social Security Code, that from June 2021 expressly equates accidents occurring at home while working from home with those occurring in the workplace: “If the insured activity is carried out in the household of the insured person or at another location, insurance cover is provided to the same extent as when the activity is carried out at the company premises”, the Court stated.

Even before this amendment, statutory accident insurance protection existed in principle for home offices and other mobile work. According to the jurisprudence of the Federal Social Court, distances walked in one's own household were handled differently. With the amendment - according to the explanatory memorandum of the law – legislator intended to close this legal gap, achieving an equal treatment in accident insurance protection in the home office as well.

Furthermore, the accident insurance cover is now also extended to persons who work from their home office and who have to go to the kindergarten or day care centre for their children or the children of their spouses or partners. 

Until this amendment, only the route taken by parents was covered by accident insurance, if they dropped off or picked up the child on the way to or from work. If the work is carried out in the home office, routes related to childcare are now also to be covered by the insurance.

In many countries, employers have a duty of care to their employees, regardless of where they work.

In the comparative cross-country study by Ius Laboris on this issue, for example, an employment tribunal in Chile recently ruled that an employee who fell on the stairs on her way from her room to her desk in her home office was protected by professional insurance against injury and/or illness, because the accident occurred while she was walking down the stairs carrying her laptop computer to her desk to connect to a work meeting and there was a cause-and-effect relationship between her work and the injury.

In Italy, statutory accident insurance for so called ‘smart’ workers (governed by Art. 23 of Law no 81/2017) expressly provides that they are entitled to protection against occupational accidents related to work performed outside their employer’s premises.

In Cyprus, an accident that occurs in the home of the employee who is teleworking or on the employee’s usual route to his or her home office, will be considered to occur in the workplace.

These provisions are particularly important to be considered by employers, especially at a time when working from home has been, and continues to be, increasingly widespread.