Lone workers are employees who perform their duties alone. Common examples include on a night shift at a petrol station, remote engineers, and paramedics.
Due to the unique workplace health & safety hazards they face, it’s good business practice to perform a risk assessment of their working environment. You can call us on 0800 028 2420 for immediate support with your assessment.
You can also download a free template, which provides guidance across the steps you need to take.
What is a lone working risk assessment?
It’s a process where your business assesses and identifies the hazards present for your lone workers.
This’ll help you to establish suitable health & safety procedures, reducing the risks the individual will face.
Working alone poses a number of potential risk. And these can become serious if there are no colleagues about to assist or rescue staff members who become injured.
So, your assessment can establish a plan of action to avoid issues. But also to provide effective assistance in the event of an accident.
Is a lone working risk assessment a legal requirement?
Yes. It’s a requirement to assess employee exposure to risk and examine if staff could suffer harm. If so, then you’ll need to have a risk assessment.
You have a duty of care to your staff, as The Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 outlines.
But you may also wonder, “Is a lone working risk assessment required when working from home?” Again, it’s not a legal requirement. But it’s good business practice to conduct one to promote employee health & safety.
How to carry out a lone working risk assessment
You’ll need to inspect each employees’ working environment to determine what the potential hazards are.
There are five steps of a risk assessment, HSE states these are (as part of a lone working risk assessment checklist):
- Identify the hazards.
- Decide which individuals may face harm—and how.
- Evaluate the risks and then make decisions on the precautions you’ll use.
- Make detailed recordings of what you find.
- Regularly review and update your assessment (if you need to).
Ultimately, you should look for hazards—such as the possibility of violence and aggression towards the employee.
Or the chance of an accident or injury while they’re working.
Download our free lone working risk assessment template
The nature of the assessment will depend on the type of job your employee has. Your inspection will depend on the working environment they’re in.
To help you understand a generic risk assessment for lone working, you can download our free sample by clicking on the on this page.
It’s a lone working risk assessment form example that includes:
- A template that highlights the individuals at risk and who the assessor will be.
- The hazards that are present.
- The control measures for providing greater health & safety.
This assessment is applicable across all working environments for your employees working alone.
After completing the inspection, you may need to make reasonable adjustments to the working environment to make it safer.
Need our help?
If you’ve downloaded the template but need further support, get in touch and we’ll talk you through your business’ health & safety requirements: 0800 028 2420
