HSE Loneworker Regulations

These pages look at how employers should react to their legal requirement to provide a duty of care to all their employees, in this page we look at the needs of loneworkers.

As the HSE state "Employers have responsibilities for the health, safety and welfare at work of their employees and the health and safety of those affected by the work, eg visitors, such as contractors and self-employed people who employers may engage. These responsibilities cannot be transferred to people who work alone.

It is the employer’s duty to assess risks to lone workers and take steps to avoid or control risk where necessary. Employees have responsibilities to take reasonable care of themselves and other people affected by their work and to co-operate with their employers in meeting their legal obligations."

The action plan for any Health and Safety Manager is ...

Who works alone?

What risks do they face in the jobs that they do?

Have you completed your 'risk assessment for loneworkers' if you have 5 or more staff (this is your legal duty).

The HSE Guidelines on 'Risks Assessments' are found here. (it will open a pdf document)

Step 3 of the risk assesment is to 'evaluate risk and decide on precautions'.

Have you carefully assessed the needs of women working alone? (As stated specifically in the HSE booklet referred to).

Loneworker Assessments will come back to 3 areas;

Policy, training and systems.

Policy

what work will you specifically allow a loneworker to undertake? What will be excluded?

Training

Loneworkers that face the public on their own in any sort of environment need to be trained to deal with a range of situations, commonly this would be Irate clients and customers. An untrained person is liable to make choices in a stress situation which may further worsen an already bad situation.

Systems

In addition to training the use of systems to allow the loneworker to raise an alarm or call for assistance are increasingly relevant on the basis of cost and effectiveness. We have come accross a number of methods used;

Ineffective ...

Dial In-Out System / Mobile Phones

When going for an appointment the loneworker dials into a voice system which records the meeting time and location. When the end time is reached the system will dial the user to remind them to notify the system of the end of meeting. A phonecall and PIN numbers are required to be entered. If the end of meeting notification is not given then the system will escalate the fact to the managers/office of the loneworker. Who will take that call? What will they do? In most events they will, if available, call the users mobile hoping to hear the voice of the colleague. If there is a real problem what would they do?

The use of mobile phones for this purpose and the so called 'number5' speeddial services is also deeply unsatisfactory. Where is your mobile phone when you are in a meeting? And if you did have it with you what response would be provoked by you trying to use your phone?

Effective ....

Peoplesafe

The device used is an ID card holder, it is worn naturally on the outside of clothing and is always easily accessible. The ID card holder contains the same content as a mobile phone, so in a stress situation the user can easily press a thumbpad on the back of the device to begin a red alert. On pressing this button the device 'calls' our 24/7 alarm monitoring station where someone will 'listen in' to the sounds going on around the device. Verbal or Physical Abuse will be quickly apparent and in these situations we will escalate the event to the Police if necessary.

Go to our section "what is peoplesafe" for further details.