Lone Working hits the headlines again

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) has recently been focussing on the challenges faced by lone workers and their employees in an effort to make it clearer what the considerations should be for their safety. In my experience lone worker tracking systems do help in most industries, but as an employer how do you know if you might need to use them?

Both the Health & Safety at Work and Corporate Manslaughter regulations make it clear the employer is responsible for ensuring the safety for lone workers during working hours. But lone working might not always be what it seems. The London Hazards Centre defines lone working as;

"activity which is carried out in isolation from other workers by an individual or a small team of people and where the work activity would normally last for some time"

SO are any of your employees Lone Workers? The RoSPA report gave a long list of examples of industries and workers that would likely be affected, many of which I had not considered myself before. They included:

• Shop workers
• Petrol station workers
• Warehouse and plant staff
• Sales & delivery staff
• Social workers
• Home help & nurses
• Estate agents

To name but a few!


Can Digital Communications systems help?

Lone Worker Tracking Device

As I mentioned in my previous post, Digital Communications systems are amongst the easiest to install as well as being simple to use and suitable in a number of different ways.

Lone working systems specifically work well as they provide a communications system for both regular contact and raising an emergency alarm.

Of course, if you have personnel working on the road then vehicle tracking systems or a radio communication network might be more suitable for you.

RoSPA also went into detail over the need to risk assess the workers needs and consider individuals, as work patterns are often not the same from person to person despite the job description being similar. The report (published in september) and various other useful information on Lone Working can be found on the RoSPA website.