Getting a job as a lone worker exposes an individual to numerous health and safety risks naturally associated with this type of work. For example, in most cases, emergency help may not be readily available for a lone worker. To ensure your lone worker safety program runs smoothly, you will need to identify where the potential risks and hazards lie and seek ways of mitigating such threats.
In most countries globally, e.g., Australia and the United States, laws generally direct organizations to safeguard the welfare of lone workers. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, have published quite explicit rules on the safety of lone workers.
Taking a proactive approach to lone worker safety is essential, albeit with numerous hurdles. In light of this, we have provided the five most vital steps you can follow to keep your lone workers safe.
1. Understand Who Your Lone Workers Are
A “lone worker” is a person who executes their work duties alone or in isolation, without meeting or interacting with the rest of the staff regularly. They also lack access to backup assistance and transparent structures for direct supervision.
Lone workers can be employed to fill several positions, such as:
- Delivery drivers
- Retail workers
- Work-from-home employees
- Health and social workers
- Real estate agents
- Construction workers
- Factory staff
- Agricultural staff
- Utilities, cleaning, and other service providers
Identifying your lone workers is the first step in keeping them safe. Create a list of the distinct positions in your organization taken up by lone workers while remembering that some may not be so apparent straightaway.
For instance, staff members who frequently leave their workplace to carry out a work-related task by themselves, like delivering company products or making a sales call, needs to be identified as lone workers. Similarly, a staff member doing a work task in the exact location as others but cannot hear or see their colleagues’ needs to be identified as a lone worker.
After you have finished identifying all lone workers in your organization (whether under employment or contract), identify the risks and hazards that these workers are naturally exposed to in their job roles, noting them one after another. Read more on how to identify your lone workers.
2. Isolate the Risks and Hazards Your Lone Workers Face
In this case, a work-related risk or hazard is any occurrence that is likely to harm the lone worker or cause the destruction of property or equipment.
Risks and hazards are naturally found in each working environment. However, the type and extent of these hazards vary from case to case. For instance, an employee working in an office setup can trip, fall, injure themselves, or suffer chronic back pain from ineffective ergonomic workplace design.
Also, a healthcare worker who conducts routine home visits can be attacked by a patient or get involved in an accident while traveling to see the patient.
It is best to be proactive and frequently identifies potential hazards to reduce the likelihood of injuries, disasters, and other severe occurrences happening at the workplace. Significant types of workplace hazards can be biological, physical, chemical, safety, psychosocial, or ergonomic hazards.
It is important to remember that lone-working environments can be highly dynamic (for example, when employees visit multiple work sites daily), making identifying each hazard difficult. Consider using a real-time, digital safety solution (like SHEQSY) in your lone workers’ safety plan to protect your lone workers from sudden occurrences.
After identifying as many risks and hazards as possible, you need to devise ways of managing the risks appropriately. Read more on how to identify risks and hazards in the workplace and use the findings to enhance the safety of your lone workers.
3. Assess and Manage the Risks Involved With Lone Workers
Once you have identified all the hazards you can, you need to evaluate the amount of risk associated with each hazard with a lone worker risk assessment. Afterward, take urgent and systematic steps to correct every hazard identified in the previous step, from the one with the greatest risk to the one with the lowest risk.
Aside from the inherent dangers of working alone or in isolation, the following high-risk situations are likely to jeopardize the health and safety of your lone workers:
- Undergoing physical violence
- Tripping, slipping or falling
- Working in a cramped space
- Working in remote or unknown regions
- Enduring long driving hours
- Working beyond the regular business hours
- Working with dangerous equipment or toxic substances
- A sudden medical emergency, such as a heart attack
Carrying out periodic and comprehensive lone worker risk evaluations is the most efficient method of identifying risks and hazards and managing lone worker health and safety concerns. Read more on how to carry out a comprehensive lone worker risk evaluation.
4. Create a Comprehensive Policy for Lone Workers
Developing a comprehensive safety policy framework is essential to safeguarding lone workers’ health in your organization.
The policy document outlines the rules and guidelines for the safety of lone workers in your organization. In general, a lone worker safety policy must cater to the following concerns:
- Overall safety guidance
- The roles and responsibilities of management teams and lone workers
- An effective method of identifying and managing hazards and risks
- Transparent and simple processes and procedures to ensure the safety of lone workers.
- The action to be taken in case of an emergency
- Training and continuous education requirements for lone workers
- The appropriate method of reporting hazards, incidents, and near-misses
- The tools to apply to protect the safety of lone workers (tools like the SHEQSY Lone Worker Safety App or personal protective equipment)
- A criteria for reviewing and updating the safety policy
Lone worker policies differ depending on the industry needs, legal needs, and industry-specific hazards and risks of lone workers. Read more on how to develop a lone worker policy and the benefits of creating such a policy.
After developing and deploying a lone worker policy for your organization, the journey has just started. The objective is to review the policy to ensure continued improvement regularly and that your lone workers are safer daily at the workplace.
5. Apply a Lone Worker Safety Solution
A lone worker safety solution offers the most effective way of proactively safeguarding the lone workers in your organization. Lone worker solutions are different and have varying abilities to alleviate safety and health risks.
When selecting the ideal lone worker safety solution for your organization, it is best to evaluate the precise requirements of your lone workers while considering the risks and hazards you identified in step 2.
At the very least, the ideal lone worker safety solution needs to help lone workers share their location information in real-time and check in to regularly confirm their welfare and seek instant help in case of an emergency or if they are unresponsive.
Overall, you are better off using a digitalized, real-time solution for your lone worker, like a lone worker smartphone app, which ensures your mobile and remote workers are well supported, connected, and safe all the time, even when others are not nearby. Read more on how to apply the appropriate lone-worker solutions to safeguard your remote workers.
The Most Important Features to Look For In a Lone Worker Safety Solution
Before applying a lone worker solution, it is vital that it provides the following critical lone worker safety features:
- Real-Time Location Monitoring:It helps to keep track of your employees’ GPS locations as they continue to execute their work duties. The location visibility needs to be employee-activated all the time to safeguard the personal privacy of the staff member.
- Automatic Check-In: Workers must regularly check in to confirm their well-being and safety or update their expected activity or completion times for their work shifts.
- Alerts for Overtime: You will be able to receive alerts when your staff does not report to work or work past their work shifts or assigned activity period.
- Duress/Emergency Activation: Using this feature, your workers can swiftly, effortlessly, and discreetly activate their duress in case of emergency to seek and get help in a timely fashion.
- Personalized Emergency Escalation Chains: You can use this feature to customize automated notification workflows using emails, phone calls, or SMS to make sure duress notifications are directed to the proper team leaders all the time.
- Roll Call and Emergency Notifications: In cases of an emergency, such as a wildfire or flood, you can notify your workers and conduct roll calls to ascertain that they are safe.
- Lone Worker Monitoring: This feature allows you to rely on a 24/7 expert security-monitoring center to confirm every emergency case and send out the necessary emergency services per your organization’s lone worker safety policy.
- Safety Checklists and Reports: This feature enables lone workers to carry out personalized safety checklists and forms, submit location information, and share risks and hazards incident reports, including pictures and videos.
SHEQSY’s lone worker smartphone app and dashboard provide a detailed and proactive technique that includes the features above and more to ensure your workers are safe and well-managed.
