Lone workers face a wide variety of hazards in the workplace, and it’s every employer’s duty to do everything in their capacity to protect these workers.
Part of what makes increasing lone worker safety so problematic is how varied their work situations are; around 1 in 5 workers in the UK are lone workers (with that figure likely to continue rising), and their work settings vary from home offices to remote environmental analysis in the countryside. There are however some general steps that can be taken to increase safety that employers can take, that apply to all remote working scenarios.
What are lone workers?
To understand how to increase lone worker safety, it’s important that we understand what dangers lone workers face. Lone workers are any workers who work in a remote capacity, away from the safety net of other employees and a stable workplace. As mentioned above, the scenarios these workers find themselves in are incredibly diverse.
However, one of the common safety-related denominators among all these workers is a lack of stable communication with their employer, and other parties who might be able to help them in the case of an accident.
Why protect lone workers?
There are two main reasons that employers should want to increase the safety of their lone workers. The first is providing a better work environment for employees. While this might seem obvious, ensuring that employees feel safe at work increases employee retention rates and attracts better talent. The second is ensuring HSE compliance. Employers have a legal duty to protect their employees, and this duty extends to lone workers just as much as it does to workers who occupy a regular workplace.
Risk assessments
A crucial step towards increasing lone worker safety lies in conducting risk assessments. While the hazards that lone workers face are diverse, risk assessments make it possible to identify many of those potential hazards.
Once they’ve been identified, it’s far easier to find ways of eliminating them or, if that’s not possible, of implementing contingency plans that protect the worker in question in the case that the hazard is realised.
Reliable communication
As a result of the common communication issue among lone workers, there’s a widely applicable step that employers can take to help protect their workers: equipping them with reliable communication devices that allow remote workers to raise the alarm in a wide variety of instances.
Communications specialists such as ANT Telecom offer a wide variety of solutions, particularly in supporting teams with a lone worker app. One of these is the Atlas M31, a small, tough communication device around the size of a credit card, weighing 108g. With the help of GPS/GNSS and Indoor Positioning, it allows employers to locate their employees at any time when they’re out working.
The True Man Down Detection feature also alerts employers in the case that one of their workers suffers an accident. This is just one of many options on the market, and there’s an appropriate solution for all kinds of remote workers.
