Lone workers, defined as employees who work in a remote or solitary capacity, face a wide range of dangers. From machinery-related accidents to workplace aggression, the severity of each of these risks is dramatically increased as a result of lone workers often not having direct access to assistance.
Luckily, employers have access to a variety of different ways of mitigating those lone worker risks – let’s take a look at some of those risks and the measures that can be taken against them.
1. Health emergencies
Health emergencies become far more difficult to deal with when the individual is working in a remote capacity. Whether a sudden onset of illness, an allergic reaction, or a heart attack, being removed from medical assistance can make these issues far trickier to deal with.
Employers can mitigate these risks by providing lone workers with basic first aid training, a lone worker alarm, and other failsafe communication systems. These measures should be based on the findings of thorough risk assessments and should match the risks faced by each individual worker.
2. Workplace violence
While this obviously depends on the nature of the job, a lot of lone workers will be at risk of violence, whether from clients or unrelated strangers. This can be a stressful and potentially dangerous position to find oneself in, and it’s important that employers take steps to protect against these risks.
Based on the findings of risk assessments, this could consist of providing training on conflict resolution, in addition to panic buttons that can call for help in the case that things escalate too far.
3. Accidents
Accidents do happen, and it’s important to put measures in place to mitigate the severity of those hazards. As always, this should start with risk assessments, identifying both the severity of an event and the likelihood that it’ll happen.
Based on the combination of likelihood and severity, appropriate measures can then be taken; this could typically include providing workers with PPE, in addition to removing any hazards that can reasonably be removed from the workplace, such as hazardous chemicals.
4. Environmental hazards
Finally, a wide range of lone workers will likely face significant environmental hazards in their workplace, whether that’s rough seas on offshore oil rigs or exposure to chemicals when out surveying industrial sites.
Employers need to ensure that their remote workers are able to identify each of these environmental hazards that they’re likely to experience in the workplace, and then react accordingly. What employee safety training will look like will depend on the nature of each job, and may necessitate bringing in external training providers with expertise in the field.
It’s probably obvious by now that there are a wide range of potential risks that lone workers can face in the workplace, from aggressive strangers to wild storms. Luckily, employers have an increasingly large range of measures available to help mitigate the severity of these risks. From providing safety training to ensuring that employees have reliable means of communicating alarm signals at all times, each lone worker will require a specific approach based on a detailed risk analysis of their specific workplace conditions.
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