Do Alberta OHS Rules Apply to Employees in a Home-Based Business?

The verdict: yes, OHS coverage follows the work, not the address

In Alberta, if you employ someone to work in or for your home-based business, provincial occupational health and safety (OHS) rules apply to that employment relationship, with only narrow exceptions. The Occupational Health and Safety Act and OHS Code apply to “all work activities, work sites and work site parties in Alberta,” except for specifically listed exclusions such as federal jurisdiction and certain farming or ranching operations (Guide to Occupational Health and Safety – Workers, Government of Alberta, 2022). A home used for a business is not one of those exclusions once someone other than the resident occupant is doing the work.

The Act does carve out “private dwellings,” but that carve-out is much narrower than most home-based business owners assume.

Why the private-dwelling exception doesn’t cover your employees

The Act defines the private-dwelling exception to apply only where work is “performed by an occupant or owner who lives in the private dwelling.” That protection disappears in two situations spelled out directly in the Act:

• (A) the work is performed for an employer who is not the occupant or owner who lives there, or
• (B) the work is performed by a person who lives in the dwelling and is employed by or on behalf of the occupant or owner

(Occupational Health and Safety Act, SA 2020, c O-2.2, s 1(1)(cc)(ii)(A)-(B))

In plain terms: the exception protects a person doing their own personal chores or running their own solo business alone. It was never meant to exempt a business owner who brings in staff. Alberta’s own employer guidance confirms this directly, stating the exception covers “a person who lives there… doing tasks for their own business, or personal work,” and that if you are “working from home for an outside employer, the OHS Act and OHS Code apply” (Guide to Occupational Health and Safety – Employers, Government of Alberta, 2022).

There’s a related definitional point worth knowing: the Act’s definition of “owner” specifically excludes a private residence “unless a business, trade or profession is carried on in that premises” (s 1(1)(hh)). Once you run a business out of the home, the home itself becomes an “owner”-regulated work site under the Act, not a purely private residence.

The one true carve-out: domestic workers doing household duties

There is a genuine, though limited, exception for domestic work. Alberta’s guidance states that when the occupant of a private dwelling directly employs a worker “to do normal household duties, specific code provisions apply,” and this is true “whether the domestic worker lives in the home, or not” (Guide to Occupational Health and Safety – Employers, Government of Alberta, 2022). This is a reduced, tailored set of Code provisions for household tasks like cleaning or childcare, not a full exemption from OHS.

The line matters for hybrid roles. If the same person also does business-related work (client files, invoicing, product handling), that portion of the work falls under the general OHS Act and Code, not the narrower household-duties provisions.

A related but separate carve-out: the prime contractor rule

Alberta’s OHS Act has a second, narrower private-dwelling exception that is easy to confuse with the general one. Under section 10(4), the prime-contractor designation rules (subsections (2) and (3), which normally require someone to be designated as prime contractor at a multi-employer work site) “do not apply to a person who is in control of a work site if that work site is a private dwelling that is occupied by that person.” This only removes the prime-contractor paperwork requirement. It does not remove the underlying duty to protect workers at that site, and it has no bearing on whether your employees are covered by the Act generally.

What this means for a home-based employer

If you employ even one person to help run a home-based business in Alberta, whether they work on-site in your home or elsewhere for the business, the general OHS Act and OHS Code apply to that employment. The private-dwelling exception is there to cover someone puttering in their own home alone, not a business with staff. The only reduced-obligation category is domestic household duties strictly separate from the business itself, and even that comes with specific Code provisions rather than a blanket exemption.