Gone are the days when working alone simply meant you went to do a job and came back when finished. The reality is that working alone is far more complex these days, and the dangers of working alone are too significant to ignore. From delivery drivers to independent home health care professionals, maintenance technicians to real estate agents, millions of employees work each day without another person in sight.
And while safety measures may have been designed for group efforts with help just a shout away, such benefits don’t extend to solo work. What may be an injury when one can sit down and quickly address it becomes serious when no one is around to help. What can be de-escalated with colleagues becomes dangerous. And ultimately, the biggest concern of all, nobody knows when something has gone wrong.
The Reality of Working Alone
In the past decade, more people than ever have worked alone. Field service technicians, social workers, utility workers, retail employees, all find themselves isolated at some point in their shifts. Even office employees who arrive early or stay late qualify as lone workers; those hours present situations where assistance is not readily available,
Yet being a lone worker does not only apply to individuals holed up in warehouses or remote locations. It applies to anyone isolated from coworkers or in a situation where help isn’t immediate. That means that realtors meeting clients at empty locations are lone workers. Janitors working in otherwise vacant buildings after hours are lone workers. Independent healthcare professionals who conduct home visits are always working alone.
Are Employees in Danger?
It’s important to know that dangers do not always manifest as explosions and mayhem. There’s no denying that exposure to injuries or violence is one scary prospect (workers who have readily accessible weapons on their person as part of their job naturally bear an interesting vulnerability). However, most risks are more subtle at play.
Medical emergencies become fatal without bystanders. A slip and fall that renders one unconscious becomes fatal if no one can call for help. Anaphylactic shock, cardiac arrest, when no one’s there to intervene, unless one recovers on their own, it’s game over. Even minor situations become critical without someone present; getting locked in the cold storage or stuck under equipment, isn’t as bad of a situation when someone can notify emergency responders.
From a mental perspective, working alone can also be isolating. People may take unnecessary risks without wanting to stop and report something or not even report something because no one else is around anyway. Likewise, for those who work in public-facing roles, aggression may be an ultimate risk as well; if an unhappy customer lashes out against someone in the absence of any employees, and even though the employee is still present, there’s no support unless someone else intervenes or is walking by.
Why Standard Safety Measures Don’t Work
Standard safety measures benefit those for whom group efforts are expected. Proximity matters; if people are injured, someone else must be nearby enough to recognize they need assistance. Emergency alarms and buddy systems exist because people should have immediate access to help if needed. Even basic first aid makes sense when one can approach a second person for assistance in rendering aid.
This isn’t the case for lone workers. What’s more, from a legal perspective, the employer’s duty of care extends to everyone, including those who work alone. If something happens to someone, and the employer hasn’t taken reasonable steps to monitor and ensure safety, there’s an error that goes beyond human cost and extends to regulation and compliance with the industry’s take on lone worker safety; those in violation face liability.
What’s the Solution
The first level of protection for lone workers comes through check-in systems – people check in periodically (automatically or manually) that all is well; check-in misses get reported and a response occurs. However, manual systems are only as good as someone who is awake, conscious and able enough to remember.
More proactive systems include lone worker safety devices that monitor employees automatically and raise the alarm without people having to do anything themselves. Falls, inactivity or missed check-ins are flagged, and personnel receive an alert with location information about who needs help. The technology exists whereby movement can signal either intentional breaking of social situations (running away from confrontation) or an accidental emergency (i.e., falling down stairs) a more efficient communication structure than false alarms which distinguish themselves from legitimate ones with context.
Risk assessments should occur before people work alone, the purpose is not after the fact of something going wrong, but instead to determine which roles demand solo work, what differentiating dangers exist for those employees, and what measures can actually decrease those risks. A home healthcare worker versus a field technician will face different challenges depending on their environments and needs for safety devices to ensure effective communication differ.
Communication systems matter tremendously when working alone; information shouldn’t depend on cell service or access to specific locations (i.e., people must have phones at every stop unless there’s a fallback); people must also know who to contact (and when) with systems in place that make it unnecessary for anyone working alone to choose directions during a crisis.
Making it Work in Practice
Training makes the difference between implemented safety systems and employees using them effectively; people need to be made aware of such advantages, given the reasons why they’re applied, how they’re meant for benefit and what behaviors will support success versus fail.
But most importantly, training cannot occur just once, periodic training keeps everyone on their toes.
Systems get tested regularly to catch problems; cross checks for contacts need regular updates and equipment needs checks and quarterly practiced drills; written policies without practical application do nothing to protect.
Support comes from management seeing that this philosophy matters; if bosses brush it off as a checkbox exercise instead of taking it as seriously as they should (and as employees do), complacency sets in.
The Price of Getting It Wrong
When companies weigh the cost of protecting those who work alone, they sometimes see it as an unnecessary expense; equipment costs money, systems have fees and training takes time. But these costs pale compared to what happens when an employee gets seriously injured or killed without proper protective measures put in place.
The legal ramifications exceed anything imaginable, and even near misses create anxiety that reduces retention of such jobs which are typically hard to fill anyway.
The math equals easy judgment when this factor becomes assessed honestly; protecting those who work alone isn’t optional, it’s part of responsible business practice.
Protecting Those Who Work Alone Going Forward
Those who work alone warrant protection beyond good intentions; clear systems need to be employed with reliable technology and genuine buy-in from everyone enterprise-wide.
Solutions differ based on type of work, environment and possible dangers; what matters is that those who work alone without human backup, even temporarily, require systems that bridge those gaps with solutions.
Those who recognize this need do more than ensure their liability reduction/compliance with regulatory mandates, they foster environments where employees feel appreciated and as if they’re under protective cover even when working independently. That matters for retention and productivity, and more importantly, it means everyone deserves to come home safe at the end of every shift regardless of whether they worked in close proximity to all other employees, or at all.
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