Illinois workers' compensation injuries when you work at home
Increasingly in our internet age more workers are working at home, either as their sole workplace or along with spending time in an office. How does this work environment impact their ability to be covered under Illinois workers’ compensation? As long as they are an employee and not an independent contractor, workers’ compensation benefits should still be available to at-home workers.
If you are performing your job from home, yet you are still under the control and direction of your employer, then you are likely an employee and not an independent contractor. Therefore Illinois workers’ compensation benefits would be allowed, if what you were doing when you became ill or injured arose out your employment.
Illinois courts have looked at cases where the injuries claimed under workers’ compensation occurred in places other than the employer’s premises. Benefits were often still available, if the accident or injury occurred during the course and because of employment, even though it was not on the employer’s property. Did the injury occur while he or she was in the performance of job duties?
When the employee is working at home, the lines can be murkier to determine what is arising out of the employment since it is a mixed environment. The specific facts of the work space and the duties required to be performed will need to be examined. It is relevant whether the employee was injured doing something that was specifically a work risk, as opposed to a hazard that the general public would be exposed to, or that the employee would be equally exposed to when not performing job duties.
For example, if you are working on the computer, and a delivery person comes to the door and
you are rushing on a deadline to get something out and trip trying to catch the door before it’s too late, you are likely covered under Illinois workers’ compensation. The particular hazard that you were exposed to that caused your tripping injury was not the same as that which the general public would face. You were trying to fulfill an obligation from your employer, in a home work environment which your employer knew you were using to accomplish your specific job duties.
Also, if you are working at your computer for multiple hours each day and develop back, wrist, or shoulder injuries as a direct result of that work, that injury should be considered a repetitive trauma which is covered by the benefits of Illinois workers’ compensation. Again, this is an injury that arose out of your specific work environment, and while performing your employer’s work assignments.
Insurance companies may try to argue that these home environments should not be covered under Illinois workers’ compensation, because your job location and daily performance are not under the employer’s direct supervision and control. But in the situation where you are not an independent contractor, your employer likely is in fact exercising a large amount of control over your means and methods for fulfilling your job functions, even though you are performing those functions at an off-premises location which happens to double as your home.
