Employer Responsibilities

EMPLOYER RESPONSIBILITIES

While there are no specific health and safety regulations relating to lone workers, employers have a duty of care and a legal responsibility to protect the health and safety of people working alone.

Employers must carry out a risk assessment of any work-related activities that present a risk to personal safety and they need to have a policy to inform lone workers about the processes and procedures in place to protect employees working alone.The general risk assessment should include risks to lone workers and take into account:

the task being completed,

the environment in which the employee will be working,

the patients being dealt with (e.g. do they have a record of violence), and

any factors specific to the member of staff such as training and competencies.

Once identified, provisions should be put in place to protect any employee required to work alone.

MANAGING RISKS

When looking at ways of managing risks, employers should firstly look at ways of eliminating the hazard.

For example, if the risk is caused, or increased, by the lone worker visiting a patient in their home, it may be safer if the patient has their appointment in a clinical environment where immediate support is available. Alternatively, it may be safer for the worker to be accompanied by a colleague.

If it’s not possible to remove the risk, employers should invest in a system that helps to mitigate the risks to lone workers. Options range from a simple whiteboard system to pairing lone workers up with a colleague in a buddy system.

Personal safety devices allowing the lone worker to discreetly raise an SOS alarm if they are in danger can also be used.

Although lone worker devices will not prevent incidents from happening, if used correctly in conjunction with robust policies, procedures and training, they will enhance the safety of staff working alone.

To ensure that lone working policies and procedures are accepted and implemented, it’s important to communicate to all relevant staff what their roles and responsibilities are in relation to lone working, whether they are the lone worker themselves or the manager or colleagues of lone workers. This may be facilitated through:

Clearly written policies and procedures
Induction programmes
Staff handbooks
Training sessions
Team briefings
The intranet or newsletters within the organisation

FOLLOW UPS AND NEAR MISSES

In addition to covering preventative measures, the lone working policy should state the actions that will be taken following incidents. This should include the process for investigating the incident and putting measures in place to prevent it happening again.

Where there has been a ‘near miss’ or an incident involving a lone worker, it is essential that the information is recorded and then shared with other colleagues or agencies who may be visiting the same client or going to a similarly risky environment. While training alone will not reduce violence, it’s an essential part of an organisation’s approach to managing acts of aggression. Managers should ensure that their staff have attended all relevant training, including conflict resolution, personal safety and how to use lone worker devices (if provided).

The HSE has recently updated its advice on lone workers³, advising employers to ‘train, supervise and monitor’ them, and to ‘keep in touch and respond to any incident’.

³www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg73.pdf