Are You Doing Enough for Your Lone Workforce?

It’s a question all employers of lone workers should ask themselves: is our lone-worker safety regime up to the job of keeping them safe?

The question is an important one because lone workers often face a diverse and unique set of hazards and risks while out on a job.

Adding to the difficulty of keeping lone workers safe is the fact that the risks and hazards they encounter often arise in unpredictable ways and at unexpected times.

So, what can employers do to ensure they are meeting their obligations to workers who have to carry out their duties alone?

Let’s find out.

The Law

Any company with lone workers needs to be familiar with the law regarding this type of work.

In the UK, two pieces of legislation are important:

• Health and Safety at Work etc. Act (1974). 
• Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (1999).

These laws deal with different aspects of work safety, but the message is the same in both – an employer has a duty of care towards its employees, and this duty of care extends to managing and mitigating the risks its lone workers might encounter.

Risk Assessment

A central pillar of any lone worker safety regime is the risk assessment. 

Indeed, the risk assessment features heavily in the 1999 regulations, where Regulation 3 stipulates that employers must assess the risks to the health and safety of all employees while they are at work, including those working alone.

Lone worker risk assessment should be a two-pronged affair:

• Risk Identification: Identify potential hazards faced by lone workers (e.g., violence in the workplace, accidents, and environmental or geographic risks).
• Assessment of Risk: Weigh up the likelihood of the risk arising and the severity of the harm it may cause. Here, the worker’s role, location, and vulnerability to the hazard should all be taken into account.

Communicate Findings

Communication is important in any aspect of business, but when it comes to risk management, it might be the difference between life and death.

Regulation 10 of the 1999 regulations lays out how employees must be informed about the risks identified in the risk assessment and the preventative measures taken to mitigate and manage them.

And if the company has more than five employees, all significant findings from the risk assessment should be written down and filed for inspection.

Hierarchy of Control

Identifying and assessing risks is one thing; doing something about them is another.

To ensure a company is discharging its duties towards its employees when it comes to risk management, it’s useful to keep in mind the ‘hierarchy of control’.

The hierarchy is commonly used in HR risk management, as it offers a common-sense, step-by-step approach to dealing with the risks identified in a risk assessment.

The hierarchy is:

• Elimination: If at all possible, remove a hazard or risk entirely.
• Substitution: Where possible, replace a hazardous element with something safer.
• Engineering Controls: If risks can’t be eliminated entirely, isolate workers from the hazard as much as possible.
• Administrative Controls: Alter the way workers work in risky work environments.
• Personal Protective Equipment (PPE): Use protective safety gear where necessary.

Admin Measures

In cases where risks and hazards can’t be eliminated or engineered out of a work process, the next best option is to adopt administrative controls to mitigate them.

It’s here that companies sometimes fall short when it comes to lone worker safety, as adopting the right safety measures and equipment can be time-consuming and pricey.

The good news is that a company like ANT Telecom has a vast range of lone-worker safety equipment available, perfect for any role or work environment.

Indeed, ANT has all the bases covered – from easy-to-use apps that can be installed on compatible smart devices to dedicated hard-wearing handsets that can be used in the most hazardous environments.

Stay Current 

It should be borne in mind that lone worker safety is an ongoing process.

As such, even if you have met your legal duties and gone the extra mile by buying in safety equipment to keep your workers safe, there is still work to be done. 

A lone-worker safety regime is only as good as its last review.  

With this in mind, it’s essential that HR safety managers constantly solicit feedback from workers and use that information to update safety regimes to keep them relevant.