The rise in teleworking has inevitably seen the occurrence of accidents that happen to employees when working at home. These home-based employees have the same protection as employees working on the company’s premises. An accident that occurs “at the place where teleworking is carried out” and “while performing a professional activity” is presumed to be a work-related accident (Article L. 1222-9 of the French Labour Code).
And yet, the specific characteristics of teleworking (no witnesses, no “transition downtime” between work and home, a workday interrupted by everyday activities that can equally lead to accidents) create a grey area that sometimes makes the identification of a work-related accident uncertain.
Two judgments handed down in quite caricatural circumstances illustrate this fine line.
When the accident occurs just one minute after finishing work…
In this first case, the employee fell when coming back up from the basement, where she had set up her office, just one minute after logging out. Having fractured her elbow, she sought coverage under regulations for work-related accidents. She particularly pointed out that if the same accident had occurred on the employer’s premises, it would have been recognised as a work-related accident, which is correct.
However, for the Court of Appeal it was above all a question of timing: the accident happened outside of working hours and was not related to the employee’s professional activity. It was, therefore, a domestic accident (Amiens Court of Appeal, social welfare division, 2nd chamber, 15 June 2023, case n° 22/00474)
When the accident occurs just outside the home…
In this second case, a teleworker heard a noise outside his home and simultaneously lost his Internet connection. He went out into the street to see what had happened: a lorry had hit an electricity pole. While he was talking to the lorry driver, a second vehicle ran into the cables that had fallen to the ground, which further destabilized the pole causing it to fall on the employee.
In order for this accident to be recognised as a work-related accident, the employee, who was seriously injured, stated that he had left his home for the purposes of his professional activity: he sought to understand the reason behind the breakdown so as to be able to inform the telephony operator, ultimately have the connection restored and get back to work. In vain!
For the Court of Appeal, it was above all a question of place: by leaving his home, the employee had interrupted his work for a reason that could only be personal as the employer had not given him any instructions to do so and moreover his work did not consist in identifying the reason for the IT breakdown. And so, it was a domestic accident (Saint-Denis Court of Appeal, Reunion Island, chamber for social and labour matters, 4 May 2023, case n° 22/00884).
So, in telework, it seems that a work-related accident can only be recognised if it occurs during actual working hours and only if it occurs within the teleworker’s home. Under these conditions, teleworking employees are at a disadvantage compared to employees working on the company’s premises, for whom the Court of Cassation upholds a broader notion of working hours and place, and therefore work-related accidents (Court of Cassation, plenary session on 3 juillet 1987, n° 86-14.914).