Home Alone - The Risks of Being a Lone Worker

Are you a homeworker? Then you are also a lone worker. We might think of a lone worker as being someone like a security guard patrolling premises at night. Or maybe an attendant at a 24-hour petrol station. In fact, a wide variety of people are classed as lone workers. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) defines lone workers as ‘those who work by themselves without close or direct supervision. This includes delivery drivers, health workers in the community such as district nurses, early morning cleaners, travelling sales reps, engineers. And the definition also includes home workers, whose numbers have of course increased dramatically due to Covid.

Lone workers face particular risks. The obvious one is being assaulted. According to statistics from the British Safety Council’s crime survey released in 2018, as many as 150 lone workers are attacked either physically or verbally every day in the UK.  But there are other, more subtle risks – particularly risks to mental health from stress and isolation. Also, driving exposes lone workers to risks of being injured on the roads. Employers have a duty to think about those risks and to take steps to manage them. They need to stay in touch with their lone workers and those employees are just as entitled to be properly trained and supervised as an employee in the main HQ.

If you have been injured while working alone it’s possible that the risk to you has not been properly assessed and managed. If you would like some legal advice about this – get in touch. We won’t charge for an initial consultation.

The contents of this article do not constitute legal advice and are provided for general information purposes only.