What is lone working and how can you keep your lone workers safe? (2023)
Who are lone workers?
22% of the UK working population are lone workers. A lone worker is simply someone who works by themselves without close or direct supervision. This includes:
Full-time, part-time and self-employed staff members, including gig-economy workers
Those that work from home (an ever-increasing percent of the population since 2020’s COVID pandemic)
Those that work with the public (yes, someone surrounded by people could be a lone worker)
Those that work at the same site as their team, but too far away to be closely supervised, such as someone working at a remote end of a farm, or even those working in an empty warehouse or office.
Volunteers who work on their own (For more information on health and safety and volunteering, visit hse.gov.uk/voluntary)
Care workers, estate agents, construction workers, delivery drivers, and agricultural workers are common examples of lone workers, but there are examples across all sectors. Cleaners, factory workers, security guards, utility engineers, forestry workers, environmental workers, and salespeople may also meet this definition.
Is lone working legal?
It is entirely legal for staff to work alone, as long as their employers have properly assessed the risks of doing so. The lone working staff member should also be properly trained, supervised, and should be able to stay in contact with their team. There should also be systems in place to deal with emergency incidents, such as if the worker is injured.
Note: lone workers (including the self-employed) have responsibilities to take reasonable care of themselves and those around them. They also have a responsibility to follow their organisation’s health and safety policies. This is why conversation and training is vital when employing staff that work alone.
Find out how to make a complete risk assessment here.
What risks do lone workers face?
Lone workers face greater risks due to, by definition, their lack of supervision and immediate support. Some examples of specific risks facing lone workers are:
Lack of emergency response – if anything should happen to a lone worker, such as a fall or an injury, there may be no one around to help them. What’s worse, an organisation may not even know that one of their staff is injured until it is too late to help.
Lack of supervision – when people work together, they can look out for each other and help keep the work environment safe. When working alone, a staff member does not have anyone looking out for them.
Unsafe and unpredictable environments – lone workers in remote areas may face more risks in their environment than, for instance, in a more predictable office environment.
Dealing with violence – many lone workers work with, or around, the public and can be exposed to threats, abuse and violence –without any support from their team.
Stress and wellbeing – working remotely, without interaction with a team, can be isolating at the best of times. When added to an increased risk level, working in isolation can negatively affect a person’s mental wellbeing.
What should employers do to protect lone workers?
Creating a risk assessment
Employers will need to conduct a risk assessment of their lone workers and the roles they are doing. They need to ascertain whether a task is too dangerous for a person to carry out alone, and whether their staff members are capable of working alone.
There are some activities where lone working is never appropriate, such as:
working in a confined space
working near exposed live electricity conductors;
working in diving operations, or in vehicles carrying explosives or fumigation.
Similarly, there may be reasons why a worker is not suitable to work alone, such as:
The worker is not experienced in their role
The worker has not yet been trained
The worker may be especially vulnerable due to, for instance, age, disability, or if the worker is pregnant.
Otherwise, there are some fairly universal considerations you should make when building lone working in to your risk assessment:
Does the environment or role present specific risks to the worker?
Is the staff member going into someone else’s home or premises?
Can the worker safely enter and leave where they’re working.
Does the worker have a reliable means of communication and a way to call for help?
Training lone workers
Lone workers may need extra training, particularly when there is limited ability to supervise, control or help that worker. Make sure you are enabling workers to:
Cope with unexpected situations, such as threats or violence
Deal with the requirements of the job, including any technical knowhow
Recognise risk, and when to ask for help
Supervising lone workers
After making a risk assessment, employers should consider the danger and the difficulty of the task, as well as the experience of the worker to decide how much supervision a lone worker needs. A new worker facing unfamiliar work should be supervised until they feel more comfortable with it.
Managing stress and mental health in lone working
Working alone on a regular basis can have a detrimental effect on workers’ mental health. Not only do people often miss the social aspect of group work, but many people can also struggle with a lack of supervision or support.
According to a survey run by HR Magazine, Around 18% of workers stated working alone negatively affected their mental health. A similar amount reported the same for ‘interacting with customers and clients’.
The Health and Safety Executive encourages managers to increase systems of support and supervision for lone workers, as well as looking out for signs of stress. It is also recommended you include your remote and lone workers in company updates. Feeling connected to their organisation can be really beneficial for those that work by themselves.
Monitoring lone workers
According to government legislation, organisations must monitor and keep in touch with their lone workers. There are several ways you can achieve this but make sure, whatever you decide on, to involve your staff in the conversation. You may want to monitor your lone workers’ safety by:
Making regular visits to your lone workers
Setting up agreed intervals of regular contacts, such as by phone, email or text
Making sure workers ‘touch base’ at the office regularly
Using a lone working safety solution, such as an app, which allows you to see where your staff are, and if they’re in trouble.
What lone worker monitoring method should I use?
1. Regularly visiting your lone workers
There are many benefits to routinely meeting or connecting with your remote employees but it is not, on its own, a scalable or reliable lone working strategy.
Making regular visits to your staff can be incredibly interruptive to both you and your staff’s day. What’s more, if your employee is not where you expected them to be, this may raise false flags.
2. Checking in by phone, email or text
Asking your staff to regularly check in through call, email or text is a seemingly easy to implement solution to monitoring your staff’s safety.
Unfortunately, with the ease of setup comes a number of flaws: this system can be disruptively slow; it is incredibly prone to user error (such as forgetting to send a text); it doesn’t provide any extra information such as location; and it doesn’t help if a worker is incapacitated.
3. Checking in at the office
Making sure workers ‘touch base’ at the office regularly is desirable for a number of reasons –not only can you actively see that your staff are safe, there are often wellness and morale-boosting benefits to remote staff physically meeting up on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, touching base does not, in itself, keep staff safe. Under this system, staff can easily be forgotten about, and even if a company is diligent and tightly structured, it can still lead to slower response times to potential emergencies.
Moreover, as more companies are moving away from rigid office structures (exacerbated by COVID-19), it has become incredibly hard to know who is out and who is back in their office/base/home.
4. Using a lone working solution
Using manual or automatic safety solutions, such as an app or a wearable device, offer a variety of benefits to keeping your staff safe.
Most solutions of this variety work in a similar way: staff send out an ‘alert’ when they’re in trouble and their status and location is sent to their supervisors. This can happen entirely automatically, via a fall-detection (man-down) feature, or through a time-out system, where users must check in within a set amount of time.
Note: We strongly recommend the use of a device-based lone working solution, but not all solutions are the same. There are some questions you should ask to find out what solution is right for you:
Do I need a dedicated response team (sometimes called an ARC)? For many companies, it is not feasible or desirable to manage their staff monitoring in-house. Solutions with an ARC service allow you to delegate this responsibility to a trained response centre. ARCs are perfect if you have staff that work late, or simply have a large amount of workers to monitor.
Do I need physical panic-alarms? Many people are happy with their staff using an app-based solution but, for some, having an additional physical alarm can bring extra security and discretion. These additional alarms are perfect for care workers, estate agents and others who work with the public, or in people’s homes.
Can I afford it? A dedicated solution (such as an app) is going to cost more than a makeshift one (such as sending texts). However, there are few more valuable investments than the safety of your staff. What’s more, a good lone working solution will save you time lost in manually checking up on your staff, and can help you avoid costly litigation, should an incident occur.
Check whether a solution has discounts for larger organisations or charity discounts, and find out if they have a free trial or any forced contracts.
If you have a frequently changing workforce, look for a solution with more flexibility to add and remove members.Will my staff use it? There are several factors that could get in the way of your staff using a lone working solution regularly such as privacy concerns, usability issues or just not liking the system. Remember, there’s no point investing in a safety tool, if no one is going to use it, so find a solution that does more than just tick boxes.
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How we keep lone workers safe
App & 24/7 Response
With Safepoint’s lone working solution, workers use an app for iOS or Android that connects them to a team of 24/7 responders in our dedicated monitoring and alarm receiving centre (ARC). Should the staff run into trouble, or if they are unresponsive, an alarm will be sent to the responders, who are trained and accredited to deal with the situation.
Dashboard
Safepoint also provides a browser-based dashboard, where you can see your staff’s location and safety status in real time. With live team maps and a complete audit trail, the dashboard not only helps you to protect your staff, it also makes it easier to understand their comings and goings, and can even help you make smarter decisions about your team’s safety.
Panic alarm
For those that cannot safely use their phone to call for help, Safepoint also provides a discreet, wearable panic alarm, that works in tandem with the app. The device can be paired to your phone in seconds, and it’s perfect for lone workers who work with the public, such as care workers, estate agents and shop workers.
Pricing & Discounts
Safepoint stands out from any other tool on the market. Not only is the award-winning system super reliable, but it is also easy to use, easy to customise and easy to set up. There are no scary contracts, just a flexible, affordable pricing structure (see all our prices here). There are even discounts for charities and larger organisations, and a 14-day ‘no credit card required’ free trial.
