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With up to 8 million people in the UK are employed as lone workers, it’s likely that you know or employ a good number of them.
What may be less clear is how you can define a lone worker and what responsibilities you might for them. In this post, we’ll look at the steps an employer should take when hiring lone workers to ensure they’re covered against any legal action.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) defines lone workers as those who work by themselves without any direct supervision.
However, you’d be mistaken in thinking that lone workers are only those who work in isolation. The majority of lone workers are not physically alone all the time: many of them work with the general public or in a larger team but the nature of their job means they have to work without direct supervision from time to time.
Still, these workers need to be protected — and the onus is on the employer to ensure their safety at all times.
There are a wide variety of occupations that involve lone working, even within big organisations. We’ve put together a list of examples that you can refer to:
Type of lone worker | Examples |
Out-of-hours staff | Cleaners, security, maintenance and repair staff, virtual receptionists |
Fixed establishments where there is only one member of staff | Petrol stations, kiosks, home workers |
People working separately from others in the same fixed establishment | Factories, warehouses |
Service workers | Postal staff, social workers, probation officers |
Workers whose occupation involves a lot of lone travel | Lorry drivers, taxi drivers, sales representatives |
Yes, it is legal, as long as employers take the right safety precautions first. What do businesses need to do when they have lone workers?
Section 19 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 requires the employer to undertake a risk assessment. The law requires employers to carefully consider any health and safety risks a lone worker might face in any environment and take action to combat them. They should then implement a lone worker policy, which should be communicated regularly to all staff.
Employers aren’t just responsible for the health and safety of their own workers: they’re also responsible for the safety of contractors and self-employed staff that they hire, too.
While some hazards can be seen, others are not so obvious. Here are some risks a lone worker could be exposed to at any time:
Here are some key steps that an employer should take to stay compliant with existing health and safety legislation:
To carry out an effective risk assessment, you can follow this checklist provided by the HSE:
With the proper training, you can ensure lone workers keep themselves as safe as possible while working by avoiding the risks you’ve identified with them.
What’s most important is that they know where to draw the line between a safe activity and a risky one. Employers should set the limits for employees before they go to work and keep in touch with their staff at regular intervals to ensure those limits are being adhered to.
No matter how many precautions you and your workers take, accidents can still happen. That’s why it’s crucial that you have a remote lone worker solution that allows you to respond rapidly should anything happen.
At CALLCARE, we solve this problem with our lone worker protection helplines. We have a dedicated team who keep in touch with your remote employees at regular intervals to ensure they’re safe. If there are any problems, our team can respond immediately with the appropriate action, whether that’s contacting a supervisor or calling the emergency services.