With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, many in the world’s workforce have shifted to home-working, thereby joining the hundreds of millions of workers who have already been working from home for decades. This report seeks to improve understanding of home work, as well as to offer policy guidance that can pave the way to decent work for homeworkers both old and new.

This report addresses three different types of home work:

1. industrial home work – refers to goods production undertaken by homeworkers either as part of, or replacing, factory production, but also artisanal production, such as in the making of handicrafts;
2. telework – refers to employees who use information and communications technologies to perform their work remotely. Following Convention No. 177, consideration is limited to teleworkers who work at their home (or another location of their choosing) on a regular or permanent basis; and
3. home-based digital platform work – refers to service-sector tasks performed by “crowd workers” according to the specifications of the employer or intermediary, in situations in which the workers do not have the autonomy and economic independence to be considered independent workers in national law.