Lone Worker Legislation

Not only does the relevant legislation cover your employees, but it extends to contractors and any self employed workers you use. 

To understand your duty of care and begin to comply with lone worker legislation, first of all you must fully understand the risks for your lone workers and consider what can be done to reduce those risks. High risk work might include working at height or near live electricity conductors or there may be environmental factors at play. You can then use this information to develop your lone worker policy if you don’t already have one. 

In this short article, the Health & Safety Executive provides thorough guidance on how to protect your business and your workers which is an excellent starting point to help you consider your lone worker policy. 

Key legislation applicable to lone workers

There are three important pieces of legislation which apply to lone workers in the UK. You need to comply with your legal duties towards any workers you have under:

• the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974
• the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999
• the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 (in the worst case scenarios)

Moral obligations

Aside from the legal obligations to your lone workers, as an employer it pays to be doing everything you can to ensure your workforce feels safe. In an earlier article, we discussed the benefits to an organisation which listens to health and safety concerns and acts upon them. They include better employee engagement and retention – you can read our ‘Health & Safety: What’s in it for me?‘ article here.

What can lone workers do to keep safe?

Your lone workers also have a duty of care both to themselves and to others who may be affected by the work they do. Workers need to understand the importance of complying with reasonable instructions, policies and procedures set out by their employer and the consequences of not doing so. They need to stay up to date with any health and safety and lone worker advice you provide as their employer.

How can Trackplot help?

We help you comply with Health & Safety laws. Using your risk assessments we can help you to identify different lone working patterns and risks, to recommend the best solution for you. Our purpose at Trackplot is to help lone workers operating in rural, isolated and hazardous locations to keep safe and return home safely each day. We have designed our solution specifically for outdoor lone workers, who are typically exposed to environmental hazards, enabling them to keep in touch wherever they are.