If you have lone workers, there are UK employment laws and essential health & safety requirements your business must adhere to in order to safeguard the wellbeing of your employees.
It’s important to make sure these employees are safe during their working hours, even if this isn’t at your business premise. Within this article, APHC partner Croner will provide insights into how to ensure the welfare of employees who work alone.
What is Lone Working?
It’s where an employee works in isolation—that’s without any close or direct supervision from a manager. This can pose considerable health & safety risks, depending on the type of role they have and the industry you operate in.
The different types of lone workers include:
• Working at a fixed base.
• Security staff with hours separate from colleagues.
• If they’re working from home.
• If they work away from a fixed base. For example:
– Healthcare workers visiting a patient’s home.
– Construction, maintenance, and repair workers.
• Service workers such as taxi drivers and postal workers.
• Delivery drivers.
Lone workers typically won’t have anyone around to help them in the event of an accident. As an employer, you need to take steps to ensure your employees have comprehensive support. Additionally, you should already have measures in place in case of an accident.
Lone Working Laws in the UK
Hiring lone workers is legal, but you do have a duty of care to them. Current UK laws mean you are doing everything that is ‘reasonably practicable’ and ensure staff are safe at work. There isn’t a specific law regarding lone working legislation, but health & safety legislation applies to many of the duties they carry out for your business. That includes the:
• Health & Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.
• Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations 1999.
• Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992.
Ultimately, under lone working regulations, as an employer, you must:
• Identify the employees who work alone.
• Analyse the hazards they face (conduct a risk assessment).
• Create a lone working policy.
• Put in place control measures for these employees to reduce the risk, or remove the ones they face.
• Review your control measures on a regular basis.
The Hazards of Lone Working
You must take careful steps to ensure the safety of lone working staff. As we mention above, they face an increase in specific risks while completing their job. Some common examples of the hazards staff face are:
• Sudden accidents (and emergencies) following an incident.
• Loneliness and a sense of isolation.
• Struggling to get the right amount of rest and hygiene due to the lack of normal facilities.
• Potential physical violence from intruders.
Lone working at height is another major issue. It is, in fact, one of the leading causes of workplace fatalities in the UK. There are three specific points to address with working from a height:
1. Avoid working at a height where “reasonably practicable”.
2. If you can’t, try to prevent falls with a safe working environment—or equipment.
3. Take steps to minimise the distance of a fall (such as using equipment or objects—guardrails, scissor lifts, toward scaffolds etc.).
Providing training to the individual will also be of considerable assistance.
Health & Safety for Lone Working
You must take the reasonable actions available to you to ensure the safety and wellbeing of staff working alone.
There are certain steps you can take to manage that. Including:
• Provide additional health & safety lone working advice to your employee.
• Performing a risk assessment of their working environment.
• Understanding your lone worker’s location at all times.
• Provide appropriate safety training and other guidelines.
• Providing personal protective equipment where relevant—but, especially, to supply a personal alarm.
Lone working roles are the type where the individual can, if they’re not careful, become complacent—and such lapses in judgment can lead to accidents. So, you should look to train the employee so they understand that they shouldn’t:
• Think nothing will ever happen to them while working (complacency).
• Try any activities they can’t do by themselves safely.
• Take any risks that are unnecessary.
• Avoid trusting their instincts (for example, ignore that a task is obviously dangerous).
It’s also good business practice to provide the individual with lone worker first aid training. Through this, you can educate them on how to deal with issues such as accidents and minor injuries.
It can also help them to prepare them mentally for the possibility of a more serious accident. During this, they’d have to stay calm and then find assistance. Providing training could help to avoid severe consequences at a future date.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Lone Working
From a business perspective, you may need employees to work alone—it could be an essential aspect of your business.
Here are some of the advantages:
• Qualified and accomplished staff can work independently to a high standard.
• They can make important decisions based on their experience, with limited outside interference.
• They’ll complete essential tasks groups of individuals couldn’t do together (for example, as it would prove too dangerous).
The disadvantages are already clear from this guide, but for clarity:
• Lone workers face a significant increase in the dangers they face.
• The risk of severe injury means they could struggle to gain the help they need. You must invest in procedures to ensure they have support.
• The employee is more isolated and many suffer from mental health issues.
Ultimately, if the work needs completing then you’ll need this type of staff member. To work around the disadvantages, you can establish policies and procedures to ensure their wellbeing.
In Summary
In conclusion, if you have lone workers, it is important to adhere to UK employment laws and health & safety requirements to ensure their safety and well-being. This includes identifying the hazards they face, creating a lone working policy, and implementing control measures to reduce risks. While there are advantages to lone working, such as independence and the ability to complete certain tasks, there are also disadvantages, including increased dangers and potential mental health issues. Therefore, it is crucial to establish policies and procedures to support the well-being of lone workers.
