<aside> <img src="/icons/heart_orange.svg" alt="/icons/heart_orange.svg" width="40px" /> As a people-first organization, gaiia strives to create a better environment for the team as a whole. We are committed to maintaining a healthy, safe and productive fully remote workplace that controls risk of illness, injury and property loss, even at home. We intend to conduct business in the safest possible manner.

Health and safety programs are a collective effort; everyone’s cooperation in the promotion of workplace safety is required to make gaiia a safe place to work.

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— Useful Resources

Home Office Safety Checklist?

Ergonomy

Emergency Contact Numbers

— Workplace

In a remote-first environment, team members are afforded the flexibility to determine where their designated workplace will be situated. For the purposes of this guideline, the workplace is defined as the specific location (e.g. a home office) you regularly work. We expect that you establish a secure, indoor workplace and refer to it during all subsequent safety inspections and checklists, but we understand that you might not always work at that established workplace, and that's fine too 😉.

gaiia is committed to limiting workplace injuries. For that reason, your remote workspace should be set up using the following guidelines:

• Ensure your equipment, desk, chair, and screen are set up in an ergonomically friendly way to minimize Health and Safety risks.
• Cables, wires, paper, gaiia equipment, and stationary are safe and secure in a way that would not pose a workplace injury or hazard (i.e., slipping or tripping).
• You have sufficient and adequate lighting for video calls and to avoid eye strain.
• Your work, work equipment, and gaiia’s company provided equipment is safe, and secure at all times, especially when not in use or when left unattended (i.e., locked, password protected, multi-factor authentication, put away when not actively working, etc.).
• You ensure compliance with gaiia’s Confidentiality and Privacy Policy at all times.
• You have a quiet, noise-free, and distraction-free remote workplace.
• You have access to stable, and secure internet for the work you need to get done. We highly recommend the use of VPN and avoiding unauthorized sites to safeguard your work, equipment, and confidential information on your devices.
• You take reasonable measures to ensure that screen content is not viewable, and phone or video conversations involving personal or other sensitive information cannot be overheard by others in the remote workspace.

If your role requires that you travel on-location, in work vehicles or to client sites, these will be considered gaiia workplaces for the purpose of this policy.

Injuries that occur outside of the designated workplace, unless occurring during the completion of one’s job duties, will not be considered workplace injuries.

We understand each team member has individual needs and may require accommodation to succeed in their work. If you require accommodation when it comes to setting up a safe workspace, contact your manager or the Culture & People team. Accommodation requests will be treated confidently, and on a case-by-case basis between the company, the manager, and the team member expressing such accommodation.

If requested, employees agree to cooperate with the accommodation process including but not limited to attending meetings with management and conducting assessments/inspections from professionals, with advance notice, to help you at work.

— Communication

We encourage open communication on health and safety issues. Our commitment is that:

• Team members that voice or identify a health and safety concern will never be subject to retaliation or reprisal.
• Health and safety comments or concerns will be reviewed by the Culture & People team. We will initiate an investigation on each reported and/or potential hazard as required.